“This is a marvelous wonder-room of a thing, an intricate, deeply researched, and brilliantly-written mad scientist’s tour of crime and how it’s bound to the world we’ve built. Revealing, spectacular and riveting.” — Warren Ellis, New York Times bestselling author of Gun Machine

Studying architecture the way a burglar would, Geoff Manaugh takes readers through walls, down elevator shafts, into panic rooms, and out across the rooftops of an unsuspecting city.

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.

Encompassing nearly 2,000 years of heists and break-ins, the book draws on the expertise of reformed bank robbers, FBI Special Agents, private security consultants, the L.A.P.D. Air Support Division, and architects past and present.

Whether picking locks 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 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.

Stop by the Mossman Lock Collection at 6:30pm on Tuesday, April 5, for the launch of Geoff Manaugh's A Burglar's Guide to the City (FSG Originals). The night will kick off with a live Q&A between Geoff and Radiolab's Robert Krulwich, with copies of the book for sale courtesy of the Strand Book Store.

Afterward, enjoy a beer (or two) donated by our friends at Sixpoint Brewery while you wander amidst the Mossman's amazing assemblage of old locking devices, from Roman padlocks and wooden door seals of ancient Egypt to the time locks of 19th-century bank vaults.

burglarsguide.com

Praise for A Burglar’s Guide to the City (FSG Originals):

“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

“Who knew urban studies could be so riveting? 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, Senior Curator of Architecture & Design, Museum of Modern Art

“This burglar’s guide isn’t for ordinary smash & 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, Radiolab

“Murphy’s Law — anything that can happen will happen — is especially true for architecture. Geoff Manaugh’s liaisons with burglars and bank robbers reveal the unexplored niches and loopholes of 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, architect, BIG

“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