Every now and then a book comes along so startling in its ingenuity, so crisp and invigorating in its perception and argument, so revealing in its investigation of its subject matter, that one is forced to reevaluate, reconsider, and restructure one's understanding and one's perspectives on theatre, discourse, and history. Such a book is Anthony Kubiak's Stages of Terror. -Theatre Studies

. . . quite compelling. It is rich and complete while leaving plenty of room for further development . . . -Text and Performance Quarterly

Using Aristotle's Poetics as its point of departure, Anthony Kubiak traces the forms or stages of terror as a cultural and performative principle through English Renaissance and Restoration plays, through the modern and postmodern, to contemporary terrorist theatres.