A Burglar’s Guide to the City
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 L.A.P.D. 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 readers will never enter a bank again without imagining how to loot the vault or walk down the street without planning the perfect getaway.
Stats for nerds
8recommend
11mentions
9people
2015–2026years
73% recommend27% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Somewhat related: A Burglar's Guide to the City https://burglarsguide.com/ looking at urban architecture from the perspective of someone who doesn't use windows the way they're intended
- If you want something written from a criminal viewpoint, but not from a criminal, I highly recommend A Burglar's Guide to the City: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22237142-a-burglar-s-gui...
It's more about architecture and security than it is about crime, but still very good.
- Geoff Manaugh, author of this blog, has a fun book called "A Burglar's Guide to the City", discussing how city layouts influence the types of crimes committed there.
One example that I remember talks about the differences between Los Angeles and New York City: at one point in the 1990s, LA was the bank robbery capital of the world, averaging over 1 per day for a while, but bank robberies rarely happen in NYC. When you compare their layouts, it makes total sense: LA was built around the car. The pattern of "highway offramp, bank next to the road, highway onramp" was everywhere throughout LA. Robbing a bank in NYC would be just so much harder: parking is more difficult, traffic is slower, way more people around to identify you, etc.
It's a good read.
- Noted in the footer of the story, but if you liked that content you’re likely also going to enjoy the book, A Burglar's Guide to the City:
https://www.amazon.com/Burglars-Guide-City-Geoff-Manaugh/dp/...
- It's a good point; once you start thinking about it you realize that the locks are only a (small) part of overall security. For example, can someone break a nearby window pane and unlock the door? Can they bust open the door with a strong kick? Are the windows on the second floor (for a house) always locked? A good book on this topic, about how differently thieves think about space and common security features, is "A Burglar's Guide to the City".
- I really enjoyed _A Burglar's Guide to the City_ - https://www.amazon.com/Burglars-Guide-City-Geoff-Manaugh-ebo...
The premise of the book is a study of high-profile heists and how the crimes themselves were heavily influenced and determined by the surrounding infrastructure. Where it shines though is driving home the fact that the infrastructure of a place is meant to define how that place is used & criminals are often people who use it in a way other than the way it was designed to be used - such as burglars who choose to enter through a ceiling or maneuver through the HVAC system like hallways.
It's simply the best non-technincal description of hackers and IT security I've ever seen.
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