Book excerpt: This book introduces a new point-set level approach to stable homotopy theory that has already had many applications and promises to have a lasting impact on the subject. Given the sphere spectrum $S$, the authors construct an associative, commutative, and unital smash product in a complete and cocomplete category of ``$S$-modules'' whose derived category is equivalent to the classical stable homotopy category. This construction allows for a simple and algebraically manageable definition of ``$S$-algebras'' and ``commutative $S$-algebras'' in terms of associative, or associative and commutative, products $R\wedge SR \longrightarrow R$. These notions are essentially equivalent to the earlier notions of $A {\infty $ and $E {\infty $ ring spectra, and the older notions feed naturally into the new framework to provide plentiful examples. There is an equally simple definition of $R$-modules in terms of maps $R\wedge SM\longrightarrow M$. When $R$ is commutative, the category of $R$-modules also has a