...devious misuses of the city’s buildings and infrastructure are the focus of this highly original book ... There are some wonderful anecdotes in Manaugh’s book, such as the hapless burglar who phoned the police when he became convinced someone else was robbing the house he was burgling. Another burglar cut his way through the plasterboard walls of an entire Baltimore block ... praise for Die Hard reveals the playfulness at the heart of Manaugh’s book, which is also a feature of his acclaimed architectural website BLDGBLOG. The purpose here is not to celebrate burglars as urban superheroes, 'dark lords of architectural analysis'. For the most part, he concludes, they’re simply 'assholes' who wreck lives as well as buildings. But in Manaugh’s hands the burglar becomes a wonderful metaphor for a new way of seeing architecture and the city: as 'a spatial puzzle waiting to be solved.'
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.
In a book this delirious with ideas, a few land more firmly than others. It may not be literally true that '[b]urglars are as much a part of architecture as the buildings they hope to break into,' but 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 one shortcoming of A Burglar's Guide to the City is its fragmented structure, full of tangents and digressions which add up to hundreds of vignettes but no sustained narrative. Manaugh offers us dollops of everything he researched, without a full meal ... Still, the kaleidoscopic pattern of this book is its strength too. It's not just a guide to crimes of the city; it's a theory of cities, and the psychological contortions required to live in tiny boxes right alongside each other, with only thin, easily broken walls between us. You'll never look at your home the same way again.
Though A Burglar’s Guide to the City is filled with other colorful exploits, it’s far less a handbook for would-be thieves and instead uses their craft as a springboard into a heady series of interrogations of urban design and architecture ... A Burglar’s Guide to the City is bestrewn with similar, entertaining turns of phrase but as a whole, its structure is ironically (appropriately?) labyrinthine, filled with tangential side passages and discursive stairways that don’t necessarily lead anywhere specific.
