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TO THE END OF TIME: THE SEDUCTION AND CONQUEST OF A MEDIA EMPIRE by Richard M. Clurman; Simon & Schuster; 368 pages; $23

The deal to top all deals -- and perhaps the last of them -- in the mad decade of corporate takeovers and mergers was the betrothal on March 4, 1989, of Time Inc., one of the world's most influential magazine- and book- publishing companies, to Warner Communications, the flashy, crap-shooting entertainment conglomerate whose dowry included a major movie studio, Madonna, Batman, Bugs Bunny and Alfred E. ("What -- Me Worry?") Neuman of Mad. After an unfriendly suitor (Paramount...

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RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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