This article contains a review of the literature, which has been published recently, on the dynamic plastic behavior of simple structures. The dynamic loads cause large plastic strains which dominate material elastic effects. Thus, the accuracy of various refinements of simple rigid-plastic methods are discussed, together with the phenomena of pseudoshakedown under repeated loads, dynamic plastic buckling, and dynamic progressive buckling. Recent studies are also reported on similitude under large impact loads, and on the ductile-brittle fracture transition due to the changes in the physical dimensions of a structure.