The increasing interest in the dense z-pinch was reflected in the 75 papers presented at this conference, which was the second in what will probably become a regular series. The first conference was held in Alexandria, VA, in March 1984, and was restricted to the fusion applications of the dense z-pinch. The second conference included other applications and was notable for the variety of the contributions from the USA, USSR, UK, France, Federal Republic of Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan and India.