... tectonic shifts as the breakdown of an inherited class structure or the development, under the twin pressures of capitalism and revolutionary experience, of a functionally modern conception of the crowd, one intends a state of phenomena whose elements “are mixed to such an extent that it is impossible...

...To move from the retrospective and nostalgic view of the Restoration that is Balzac's to the world leading to the Second World War that is Sartre's is to cover a bit over a century of tumultuous change, industrial and economic revolution, and social evolution in mores, class structure...