英语阅读：031《经济学家》读译参考之三十一：时代的殓房－暴力充斥二十世纪.docVIP

TEXT 31 The 20th century Times mortuary 时代的殓房（陈继龙 编译） Jun 1st 2006 From The Economist print edition WHAT was the 20th centurys most distinctive feature? It is a historians parlor game[1], but there can be no definitive answer. For some, it would be getting men to the moon, discovering penicillin, splitting the atom or some other great scientific a________①. For others, it would be the fastest and most sustained period of economic growth in history. Or the end of the age of empires, which had dominated the politics and economics of the world for centuries. For Niall Ferguson, however, only this last description comes close and even then only as background. In his view, the centurys most distinctive feature was violence: the slaughter, and not only in war, of millions upon millions of people. His new book seeks to describe and, as far as possible, explain why this happened. 二十世纪最鲜明的特征是什么？这是一个历史学家们讨论的问题，但可能谁也无法准确回答。有的人认为是人类登月、发现青霉素、原子裂解以及其它一些伟大的科学成就，而有的人则认为是史上经济增长速度最快、最稳定的时期，也有人认为是统治世界政治经济数百年的帝国时代的终结。然而，对于尼尔·弗格森而言，只有最后一种说法才是最贴切的，也只有这一点才是值得参考的时代背景。在他看来，二十世纪最鲜明的特征就是暴力——不计其数的人惨遭屠戮，而且不仅仅因为战争。他新近出版的著作就是要寻求记述并尽可能阐明这一切发生的原因。 For a book with the word “war” in the title, it is interesting that few battles are mentioned. The first world war breezes past in just a few pages. Some short passages look at Hitlers advance into the Soviet Union in 1941 and at the Japanese imperial armys advance on the then Chinese capital of Nanking in 1937, but this is not a military history. The e_______② is firmly on causes and consequences, whether political, sociological, technological or economic. As the author points out,（1） what was notable about the centurys violence was the fact that, for all its global reach, the causes—and indeed much of the killing—were centred on the most developed and advanced part of the world, home of the supposed Enlightenment: Europe. 一本标题包含“战争”字眼的书竟然很少提及战事，这很有意思。该书寥寥几页便将第一次世界大战轻松带过，关于1941年希特勒挺进苏联以及1937年日本帝国军队进占中国当时的首都南京，该书也仅用了较短的篇幅，但并非是记录军事斗争的历史。该书始终着眼于从政治、社会、科技