JUNE 2016 - AudioFile
Is this book for burglars, or those who fear them? It’s a little hard to tell, which is a problem. Another is that it is more a padded blog or magazine piece than an audiobook with a coherent thesis. While much of the material is interesting the first time you hear it, the second and third times tend to pall, as do lists of things like shapes of lockpicks we will never see or care about. Scott Aiello, so good at fiction, here gets in the way as he tries to breathe drama into material that has no emotional content, and overplays any hint of wit or irony, as if he were performing a snarky SNL skit instead of letting the listener hear what’s there. B.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
11/09/2015
Architecture blogger Manaugh (The BLDGBLOG Book) turns the building world inside out in this fascinating view of the modern city as seen through the eyes of a potential burglar. Noting that “burglary requires architecture,” he shows how burglars deconstruct a seemingly stable building environment into a “Matrix space... of dissolving and pop-up entryways through to other worlds.” They not only navigate air ducts, elevator shafts, and rooftops to gain access to interiors, but sometimes turn regulations intended to safeguard buildings into break-in blueprints. Observing that “cities get the type of crime their design calls for,” Manaugh shows how Los Angeles’s freeway system facilitates the “stop-and-rob” bank heists that made it “the bank robbery capital of the world” in the 1990s, and how, in the late ’80s, one enterprising gang of crooks used the city’s storm sewer system to tunnel into a bank vault and nab millions in loot. Manaugh supports his analyses of these weak spots in urban architecture with abundant insights and observations from law enforcement officers, security specialists, and self-identified burglars, and laces the text with thrilling accounts of audacious burglaries. Readers of this illuminating study will never look at the buildings and cities they live in the same way. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
This burglar’s guide isn’t for ordinary smash and grab burglars, it’s for the rest of us—who like to steal in, steal out, and get away with glorious dreams. A spectacularly fun read.” —Robert Krulwich, co-host of Radiolab
“Murphy’s Law—anything that can go wrong will go wrong—is especially true for architecture. Geoff Manaugh’s liaisons with burglars and bank robbers reveal unexplored niches and loopholes in our cities, and through the eyes of urban hackers we find new possibilities for reinterpreting the built environment. A Burglar’s Guide to the City shows that architecture is too important to leave to just the architects.” —Bjarke Ingels, BIG Architects
“Who knew urban studies could be so riveting? Geoff Manaugh excels at finding new, illicit, and fresh angles on a subject as loved as it is overexposed—the city. In his new book, elegant, perverse, sinuous supervillains maneuver and master the city like parkour champions. I see the TV series already.” —Paola Antonelli, MoMA
“Reading Geoff Manaugh is like donning night-vision goggles at the edge of a dark forest—you are suddenly aware of, and alive to, a world that was always there but occluded. A Burglar’s Guide to the City is a crackerjack intellectual caper.” —Tom Vanderbilt, New York Times bestselling author of You May Also Like and Traffic
“Despite its title, Geoff Manaugh's A Burglar's Guide to the City won't teach you how to break into houses. It won't help you outsmart wily cat burglars with ingenious home alarm systems, either. Instead, it explores something a lot weirder and more interesting: Manaugh argues that burglary is built into the fabric of cities and is an inevitable outgrowth of having architecture in the first place.” —Annalee Newitz, Los Angeles Times
“An exhilarating, perspective-shifting read.” —Patrick Lyons, VICE
“For years, Geoff Manaugh has entertained and fascinated us with his BLDGBLOG, and now he's even better at full-length, with A Burglar's Guide to the City, a multidisciplinary, eclectic, voraciously readable book that views architecture, built environments, and cities themselves through the lens of breaking-and-entering... Manaugh's work is characteristically far-ranging and eclectic, and always fascinating... Come for the true crime, stay for the education in architecture and urban planning.” —Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
“Intriguing... a surprising and fascinating true-crime epic.” —BBC
“I cannot think of a more informed, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable tour guide through the historical and contemporary intersection of burglary and architecture than Geoff Manaugh. A Burglar’s Guide to the City makes disparate connections seem obvious in hindsight, and my worldview is altered a little bit more, and far for the better, as a result.” —Sarah Weinman, Barnes & Noble Review
“Geoff Manaugh’s A Burglar’s Guide to the City gives the realm of architecture the kinetic thrills of a heist film.” —Alex Bozikovic, The Globe and Mail
“Architecture blogger Geoff Manaugh’s fascinating book A Burglar’s Guide to The City posits that our living and working spaces, no matter how seemingly secure, are proving grounds for small-time crooks and sophisticated criminals alike; a smart thief will calibrate his routine based on the way a specific structure is designed. Manaugh’s book locates the spot where architecture and crime intersect.” —Marc Weingarten, The Guardian
“A compelling review of the ingenious ways that burglars negotiate the built environment—and what we can learn from their infrastructural ingenuity.” —Robbie Gonzalez, Wired
“Smart, original... delirious with ideas... it’s hard to argue with Manaugh’s contention that burglary is ‘a new science of the city, proceeding by way of shortcuts, splices, and wormholes.’” —The Boston Globe
“A Burglar’s Guide to the City is a masterpiece of mad ideas, pouring out one after another. The book is one of the most enjoyable volumes of the year.” —The Washington Free Beacon
“Manaugh turns the building world inside out in this fascinating view of the modern city as seen through the eyes of a potential burglar... Readers of this illuminating study will never look at the buildings and cities they live in the same way.” —Publishers Weekly
Library Journal
01/01/2016
Manaugh (author of architecture blog BLDGBLOG) explores an interesting aspect of burglary: architecture. He believes that burglars—people who enter a private space illegally to take something—often have the best eyes and ideas when it comes to the architecture of the structures they are trying to enter. Some burglars claim to know how to enter simply by memorizing the fire code of the city and counting the windows. Manaugh makes a compelling case, and in the process persuades the reader to look at buildings in a new light. He talks to retired safe crackers, FBI agents, and police officers as he learns how burglars do everything from cutting holes in walls, climbing through air ducts, and even tunneling underground to break into their target. Law enforcement tries to add tools to increase the odds of capture and prevent burglary, but some of these tools, such as an infrared camera on the Los Angeles Police Department helicopter that patrols nightly, might be a little too Orwellian for some. VERDICT This fascinating look at how burglars analyze every nook and cranny of buildings will make readers see their homes anew. For fans of true crime, architecture, and surveillance.—Ryan Claringbole, Dept. of Public Instruction, Madison, WI
JUNE 2016 - AudioFile
Is this book for burglars, or those who fear them? It’s a little hard to tell, which is a problem. Another is that it is more a padded blog or magazine piece than an audiobook with a coherent thesis. While much of the material is interesting the first time you hear it, the second and third times tend to pall, as do lists of things like shapes of lockpicks we will never see or care about. Scott Aiello, so good at fiction, here gets in the way as he tries to breathe drama into material that has no emotional content, and overplays any hint of wit or irony, as if he were performing a snarky SNL skit instead of letting the listener hear what’s there. B.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2016-01-09
Manaugh (The BLDGBLOG Book, 2009) melds a romantic's taste for the furtive with the nitty-gritty of subverting architectural design in this fascinating, occasionally overfurnished examination of the art and science of burglary. One can't write a story of the built environment without telling the tale of those with designs on the designs: the often ingenious (but more often inept) criminals who want to break in. This rogue's gallery extends from ancient Rome to 19th-century architect-turned-heist artist George Leonidas Leslie to reformed practitioners of the present day. We also meet the security experts and law enforcement specialists who are tasked with anticipating and thwarting their incursions. Manaugh demonstrates that it is not so much what burglars steal that is interesting but how they move within an edifice or metropolis to do it. Having covered architecture and urban design for a decade, the author knows that where most see doors and windows, locks and alarms, burglars see the geometries of M.C. Escher. Buildings define the sorts of crime that can be attempted there, though it is not simply the architecture of an individual building, but the blueprints of whole cities. "Every city blooms with the kinds of crime most appropriate to its form," writes Manaugh, and burglars can intervene along unexpected paths, turning the city itself into a tool for breaking and entering. The author investigates the myth of the burglar, how novels and caper movies reveal our secret admiration for their craft, tools of the trade (exotic and prosaic), the vulnerabilities of the vault and cult of the lock, the false security of home security systems, how the Internet and social media have been a boon to crime, and, as counterpoint, how the easy pickings of a digital age find burglary in dramatic decline. Manaugh's authoritative writing wields a descriptive elegance, but while much in the book seems self-evident, he goes to great lengths to define it, and now and then, this laboring of the obvious results in unnecessary padding.
