This work will be of interest to a wide range of academics. It provides a comprehensive round-up of the proceedings and papers delivered at the 2006 Conference on High Energy Density Laboratory Astrophysics, held at Rice University in Houston, Texas, USA. The contributions come from scientists interested in this emerging field. They discuss the progress in topics covering everything from stellar evolution and envelopes, to opacities, radiation transport and x-ray photoionized plasmas.