The document aims to get you up and running with AMS-LaTeX as quickly as possible. These instructions are not a substitute for the full documentation, but they may get you started quickly enough so that you will only need to refer to the main documentation occasionally. In addition to AMS-LaTeX out of the box, the document contains a section describing how to draw commutative diagrams using Xy-pic and a section describing how to use amsrefs to create a bibliography.