A collection of essays on books and why they matter by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY and WONDER BOYS.MAPS AND LEGENDS is a love song in sixteen parts - a series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around 'serious' literature in favour of a wide-ranging affection. His own fiction, meanwhile, is explored from the perspective of personal history: post-collegiate desperation sparks his debut, THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH; procrastination and doubt reveal the way towards WONDER BOYS; a love of comics and a basement golem combine to create the Pulitzer Prize-winning THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY; and an enigmatic Yiddish phrasebook unfurls into THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION.