the twentieth century is marked by certain kinds of "holocaustal" events (two world wars, the Great Depression, nuclear weapons and communications technology, the population explosion, the mutilation of
zoosphere, famine, genocide as a policy consciously undertaken by "modernized" regimes, etc.) that bear little similarity to what earlier historians conventionally took as their objects of study and do not, therefore, lend themselves to understanding by the common-sensical techniques utilized in conventional historical study nor even to representation by the techniques of writing typically favored by historians.