ABOUT FACE: A History of America's Curious Relationship with China,from Nixon to Clinton. By James Mann. Knopf. 420 pp. $30
THE LAST AVANT-GARDE: The Making of the New York School of Poets. By David Lehman. Doubleday. 433 pp. $27.50
By Edward Alexander. Indiana Univ.Press. 284 pp. $35
By James H. Billington. TV Books.269 pp. $29.95
By Donald Norman. MIT Press.315 pp. $25
BY Stephen J. Pyne. Viking.199 pp. $24.95
By Mitchell Stephens. Oxford Univ.Press. 259 pp. $27.50
GLOBALIZATION: The Human Consequences. By Zygmunt Bauman. Columbia Univ. Press. 138 pp. $24.50
Francis Fukuyama ignited an op-ed page controversy in 1990 by portraying the conclusion of the Cold War as "the end of history." In its own way, Bauman’s new book is equally apocalyptic: it declares the end of geography.