Encompassing nearly 2,000 years of heists and tunnel jobs, break-ins and escapes, A Burglar's Guide to the City offers an unexpected blueprint to the criminal possibilities in the world all around us. You'll never see the city the same way again. At the core of A Burglar's Guide to the City is an unexpected and thrilling insight: how any building transforms when seen through the eyes of someone hoping to break into it. Studying architecture the way a burglar would, Geoff Manaugh takes readers through walls, down elevator shafts, into panic rooms, up to the buried vaults of banks, and out across the rooftops of an unsuspecting city. With the help of FBI Special Agents, reformed bank robbers, private security consultants, the LAPD. Air Support Division, and architects past and present, the book dissects the built environment from both sides of the law. Whether picking padlocks or climbing the walls of high-rise apartments, finding gaps in a museum's surveillance routine or discussing home invasions in ancient Rome, A Burglar's Guide to the City has the tools, the tales, and the x-ray vision you need to see architecture as nothing more than an obstacle that can be outwitted and undercut. Full of real-life heists--both spectacular and absurd--A Burglar's Guide to the City ensures that listeners will never enter a bank again without imagining how to loot the vault or walk down the street without planning the perfect getaway.
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“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
“Smart, original…delirious with ideas…[and] Manaugh’s contention that burglary is ‘a new science of the city, proceeding by way of shortcuts, splices, and wormholes.’”
— Boston Globe“A surprising and fascinating true-crime epic.”
— BBC“Gives the realm of architecture the kinetic thrills of a heist film.”
— Globe and Mail (Toronto)“A masterpiece of mad ideas, pouring out one after another. The book is one of the most enjoyable volumes of the year.”
— Washington Free Beacon“A compelling review of the ingenious ways that burglars negotiate the built environment―and what we can learn from their infrastructural ingenuity.”
— WiredBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Geoff Manaugh is the founder of BLDGBLOG, one of the most popular architecture sites on the Web. is the founder of BLDGBLOG, one of the most popular architecture sites on the Web. A futurist, Manaugh is a contributing editor at Wired UK, as well as a former editor of Dwell magazine. He is the author of A Burglar's Guide to the City.
Scott Aiello has narrated over a dozen audiobooks and is a 2013 Audie Award finalist for his nonfiction narration of Sex and God at Yale by author Nathan Harden. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School drama division and has since performed and directed various New York plays and has been seen on television shows such as Person of Interest and Elementary. Before Juilliard, he was a regular in the Chicago theater circuit.