This book provides an introduction to the basics and recent developments of commutative algebra. A glance at the contents of the first five chapters shows that the topics covered are ones that usually are included in any commutative algebra text. However, the contents of this book differ significantly from most commutative algebra texts: namely, its treatment of the Dedekind-Mertens formula, the (small) finitistic dimension of a ring, Gorenstein rings, valuation overrings and the valuative dimension, and Nagata rings. Going further, Chapter 6 presents w-modules over commutative rings as they...