During the past four years, the emphasis in much of the solar research in the United States gradually shifted from the structure of active regions to the nature of the impulsive phase of flares. The first two years of the review interval were dominated by completion of the Skylab data analyses, and especially by the Skylab Workshops on Solar Active Regions (Orrall, 1981) and on Solar Flares (Sturrock 1981). In the second half of the review interval, results from the Solar Maxmum Year began to appear, with especially strong contributions from the Solar Maximum Mission (Bohlin et al., 1980; Chipman, 1981) and the P78‐1 satellite experiment teams (Sheeley et al., 1980b; Landecker and McKenzie, 1982). Both satellites carry instruments that are better suited for studying flare phenomena than the Skylab instruments.