A good guide book and a map are indispensable and are almost free in proportion to the costs of your trip.

Content:
• Where to get or buy
• Books
• Maps

The best book shop in Amsterdam for maps and tourist books about Amsterdam and the Netherlands is Selexys Scheltema on the Koningsplein 20 (S) although they are not specializing in such books and maps. When you go upstairs by escalator to the first floor and turn left you will enter a room where you can find tourist books, several about Amsterdam, and a broad range of maps. You can also find there a bookshelf with translated Dutch literature, an information desk and a small lunch room. Between this room and the staircase there are several books about Amsterdam as well.
The nearby American Book Center on the Spui 12 (B) and Waterstone's Booksellers in the Kalverstraat 152 (W) also sell touristic books. In the American Book Center along the staircase between the ground floor and the first floor there are some books about Amsterdam and the Netherlands among many other places in the world. When entering the shop of the Waterstone's Booksellers you will face the information desk where you can ask about books about Amsterdam and the Netherlands. They also sell translated Dutch books; some of them are shown in their window.
The shop of the Amsterdam Historical Museum in the Sint Luciensteeg 27 (M) sells books about Amsterdam in Dutch, English, German and Spanish.
Amsterdam Tourist Office (VVV) in the wooden building in front of the Central Station near the east entrance (T) sells tourist books about Amsterdam in many languages.
Specialised book shops for adventurous travelers like Pied a Terre in the Overtoom 135 (three or four blocks west of the letter P) and A la Carte in the Utrechtsestraat 110 (C) sell the more touristic items as well.
In the 'AKO' shops (a chain of walk-in bookstores) you can buy maps and tourist books. The best is the store in the hall of the Centraal Station (A). Click here for a Google map with their addresses.
Click here for the floor plans of Schiphol Airport and look for the AKO book shops in the 'Arrivals&Schiphol Plaza' at numbers 27, 43 and 45. Click here for photos of the AKO book shops at Schiphol Airport.

There are certainly many more sites like these that I don't know and you do know. In the next paragraph you find a list of books and maps with their ISBN numbers that you can fill in the search box of the site of your choice.

There is a site about Amsterdam by three locals: http://www.amsterdam-advisor.com and the GVB (municipal transport company) has put a summary map on internet.

Below here are the ISBN numbers and the titles of tourist books about Amsterdam. You may click on the title to find more information or copy and paste the ISBN number to one of the sites in the previous paragraph (up here).

English
9781741793123 Lonely Planet Amsterdam City Guide
9780789401861 Eyewitness Travel Guide to Amsterdam
9780470384381 Frommer's Amsterdam Day by Day. Click here to look inside this book
9780554340876 Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam Click here to look inside this book
9789080885127 The Bent Guide to Gay and Lesbian Amsterdam
9780749540128 AA Citypack Amsterdam (AA Citypack Guides)
9789075979077 Jewish Amsterdam. An English review in a Dutch site.
9789812465122 Berlitz Pocket Guide Amsterdam (Paperback)
9781860467899 Amsterdam: The Brief Life of a City
9781846701344 Time Out; Third Edition edition (October 1, 2009)
9789076499079 Get Lost! The Cool Guide to Amsterdam
9781843537991 Rough Guide Directions Amsterdam
9781848365155 The Rough Guide to Amsterdam
9780764565687 Frommer's Irreverent Guide to Amsterdam (Paperback) You can read here most of the pages
9781892495464 Bicycle Touring Holland: With Excursions Into Neighboring Belgium And Germany (Paperback)
9789081494014 Hot Drop Spots (a full colour inventory of Amsterdam’s most inspiring rest rooms). Brand-new!
9789045013879 Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City. An English review in a Dutch site. Expected April 2011.

French
9782012406254 Amsterdam, Guides Voir
9782742425860 Amsterdam
9782012447431 Amsterdam et ses environs
9782915807356 Amsterdam insolite et secrète
9782012442580 Amsterdam Top 10
9782847544060 Amsterdam et les Pays-Bas
9782847544053 Amsterdam
9782012443891 Un grand week-end à Amsterdam
9782840708629 Amsterdam en quelques jours (lonely planet)
9782746923201 Amsterdam, Pays-Bas 2009-2010
9789045013992 Petite guide historique de la ville d'amsterdam Onze promenades à pied et une à bicyclette dans l'Amsterdam de Geert Mak

German
9783894166779 Amsterdam und Umgebung
9783899534702 Reiseführer Niederlande. About fifty of the 756 pages are about Amsterdam
9783899533934 Reiseführer Amsterdam MM-City
9783834201577 Amsterdam (Merian live)
9783774267053 Merian Amsterdam: Spaziergang mit Cees Nooteboom.
9783770160402 DuMont Reise-Taschenbuch Amsterdam
9783866154964 Ein perfektes Wochenende in...Amsterdam
9783492275392 Gebrauchsanweisung für Amsterdam
9783451060021 Ein Jahr in Amsterdam: Reise in den Alltag
9783829732468 National Geographic Spirallo Reiseführer Amsterdam
9783829703611 Marco Polo Reiseführer Amsterdam
9783770164028 DuMont direkt Amsterdam
9783928044202 Vis a Vis, Amsterdam
9783616064789 HB Bildatlas Amsterdam
9783855813933 Komm mit! Amsterdam für Kinder

Tip: you can write on a laminated map with a felt-tip pen, and erase the text later with a wet paper napkin.

Cito and Falk are the best known map makers in the Netherlands. There is little chance you will find their maps in a non Dutch internet book shop but you will certainly find them in all kinds of shops in Amsterdam, for instance in the AKO book shops.

Cito:
9789065801777 Municipality and vicinity, 109 x 245 mm, scale 1:14,700, €4.95
9789065802057 Center only, 91x191 mm when folded, scale 1:10,000, €3.95
9789065801920 Municipality and contiguous vicinity, 102 pages, spiral binding, 143 x 226 mm, scale 1:13,500, €8.95
9789065801593 Center only,105x150 mm when folded, scale 1:10,800, €3.50
9789065801876 Especially for cyclists. Municipality and vicinity, 105 x 244 mm, scale 1:13,500, €4.95
9789065802095 Especially for cyclists. Contains from west to east: the beach, Haarlem, Amsterdam, Hilversum and the new town Almere. 105 x 244 mm when folded, scale 1:50,000, €5.50. In this map you can see the the nodes ('knooppunten') of the Cycle Nodes Network. In the map, these are green dots with a number in it that represent reference points on the road. Between reference points there are also signposts, leading cyclists to these reference points. No bus and tram routes.

Falk:
9789028701380 Municipality and vicinity, 119 x 228 mm when folded, scale 1:15,000, €4.95. No bus and tram routes.
9789028717855 Center only. Dutch and English tourist information. 78x108 mm or twice a creditcard when folded. Scale 1:10,000
9789028711464 Center only, 110x210 mm when folded, scale 1:10,000, €3.95. No bus and tram routes.
9789028712836 Municipality and contiguous vicinity, 94 pages, spiral binding, 119 x 228 mm, scale 1:10,000, €9.95. No bus and tram routes.

Maps from abroad
9781848364851 Rough Guides; Map (edition March 1, 2010) My favorite tourist map, conveniently arranged and comprehensive. Easy to handle and easy to fold. Leave your guide book in your hotel and rely on this map!
9781858289977 Rough Guides; Map (edition May 16, 2002). Look here for the customer reviews
9783937994000 Amsterdam Laminated Pocket Map by Pocket-Pilot 3.7 x 3.6 x 0.4 inches
9783707909197 Amsterdam F&B Laminated Scale 1:10,000
9781931257299 Streetwise Amsterdam Map - Laminated City Center Street Map of Amsterdam, scale 1:9,000
9781740596381 Lonely Planet Amsterdam City Map.

Free maps:
. At the information desks of most museums you can get 'Amsterdam Museums Free Map - Guide to 37 Museums' with a short description and the web site of each museum plus a street map of the center with all the museums and the tram routes.
. At the information desk of the PTA (Passenger Terminal Amsterdam), where the cruise ships moor, you can get a map with a street index and 55 museums and other sights and tram routes.
. There is a detachable map of the center in every copy of the Amsterdam Magazine. This free monthly magazine "is distributed at hundreds of locations in Amsterdam including many hotels, popular tourist attractions, restaurants, bars and shops. For those on their way home or just passing through Amsterdam with a connecting flight, we are freely available at all four Schiphol airport lounges." Click here and find some of the addresses. The map shows museums, restaurants, hotels etc. but without street index or tram routes. The previous issues of the magazine are fully on their site, but without the map.

Maps on Internet:
On maps.google.nl we can see almost anything. You can fill in "Emmastraat, Amsterdam", "Emmastraat 100, Amsterdam", "Hotel Zandbergen, Amsterdam", "Schiphol", "American Consulate, Amsterdam" or "Consulat Francais, Amsterdam" etc. and you will often find what you need. You can find the names of the bus, tram and metro stops and railway stations by zooming in so much that you can see most of the street names. When the cursor then hovers over a little blue and square icon the name of a stop or station will appear. You may click on this icon for more information in Dutch. When you zoom in once or twice more you can try the same for museums, hotels etc. The little male figure (on top of the slider for zooming in and out) can mostly be dragged to some place on the map; after releasing the mouse button you can ride in virtual reality through the streets or the countryside and look around.
In the paragraph Accessible Amsterdam (on the page By Car of this site) you will read about an informative PDF file that you may print and take to Amsterdam.
Lonely Planet Amsterdam Map, powered by Google Click on 'Show Map' if necessary. Sights, shopping, restaurants and entertainment in Amsterdam and Haarlem. (refresh the Lonely Planet internet page if you can not read 'Sights, shopping, restaurants and entertainment' anymore)
A summary map of the GVB (municipal public transport company). When the cursor hovers over a colored dot with a number in it, the name and the accessibility will appear. You may click on If you prefer a listing in text, click here and see a list of museums etc. where you can click for the web sites of the museums.