Book excerpt: The notions of torsion and torsion freeness have played a very important role in module theory--particularly in the study of modules over integral domains. Furthermore, the use of homological techniques in this connection has been well established. It is the aim of this paper to extend these techniques and to show that this extension leads naturally to several new concepts (e.g. k-torsion freeness and Gorenstein dimension) which are useful in the classification of modules and rings.