Tom Baker

In March 2014, Tom Baker sat down with Nicholas Briggs to look back over his 80 amazing years - his youth, his early acting career, his great success with Doctor Who and beyond... and his return to his most famous role with Big Finish.

Are we alone in the universe? Is there intelligent life among the stars? Have we been visited by beings from other dimensions? Are UFOs real? Are they abducting people? Take a look at the UFO phenomenon from the earliest recorded history to the multiplicity of sightings and contacts that occur daily in the Midwest and beyond. Explore the effect the UFO phenomenon has on average people and speculate where it might be heading. Learn about a mysterious cigar-shaped airship from the 1890s manned by two men riding bicycle contraptions. Meet a nurse in a Midwest bar warning people to get out of Roswell as she was witness to the autopsy of the “little creature” – she died later in a supposed military “accident.” Find out about the Men in Black, visit conspiracy theories, investigate animal mutilation, and read about obscure sightings of extraterrestrials, including bedside visitations, car chases, abduction encounters, and more. Both longtime and new UFO enthusiasts will be delighted by this analysis. Keep your eyes on the Midwest skies!

Meet 18 of the Midwest’s most atrocious and vile human beings. Read histories of murder and mayhem committed by individuals with burning anger and contempt for societal norms, and witness the macabre visions of their personal demons driving them to commit acts so reprehensible that they have earned for themselves a place in the annals of criminal history. Meet Micajah and Wiley Harpe, horrendous murderers who left a bloody trail of forty bodies behind them. Find out what happened to Belle Gunness’s beaus. Visit the H. H. Holms “Murder Castle,” and read accounts of Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, John Dillinger, and more. For those future criminals who would follow in the footsteps of the notorious mentioned here, parting images are given: the gas chamber, gallows, firing squads, lethal injections, electric chairs, and tortured lives listening to the ticking of clocks from behind steel cell doors.

Shareholder litigation and class action suits play a key role in protecting investors and regulating big businesses. But Directors and Officers liability insurance shields corporations and their managers from the financial consequences of many illegal acts, as evidenced by the recent Enron scandal and many of last year's corporate financial meltdowns. "Ensuring Corporate Misconduct" demonstrates for the first time how corporations use insurance to avoid responsibility for corporate misconduct, dangerously undermining the impact of securities laws. As Tom Baker and Sean J. Griffith demonstrate, this need not be the case. Opening up the formerly closed world of corporate insurance, the authors interviewed people from every part of the industry in order to show the different instances where insurance companies could step in and play a constructive role in strengthening corporate governance - yet currently do not. "Ensuring Corporate Misconduct" concludes with a set of readily implementable reforms that could significantly rehabilitate the system.

Do you know what an "urban legend" is? They are those stories that make the rounds at high school hangouts and college dorms, camping trips and late night sleepovers, offices and water coolers as frightening tales too good to be true, and too scary to be fiction. These stories include the short and shivery legend, "The Vanishing Hitchhiker;" the macabre comedy, "The Hook;" and the scream-till-you-drop terror tale, "Bloody Mary." Experience the horror of lurking killers, lonely ghosts, and attacks from insects that seem to come from the pit of some forgotten nightmare. And who knows? It all might be true!

Explore Indiana, perched on the disquieting frontier between the banal and the bizarre! Visit haunted hollows and baleful abodes of the Hoosier state's most dreadful locales. Take a ride down the bannister of Culbertson Mansion, thrill to a true account of the possession of Lurrancy Vennum, splash into the murky waters beneath Lake Busco to find a real-life sea monster, and learn the twisted history of William Dudley Pelley, a man who claimed contact with beings from another world! Ride the Vincennes Airship, high above the windswept plains with the "Hartford Visitors." Indiana has witches, werewolves, ghosts, ghouls, and Hairy Men galore, in this shivery exploration of the dark side of Hoosier history.

Explore cold and shivery legends, spectral stories, and phantom folklore of Indiana’s forgotten country houses, decrepit graveyards, and lonely wooded lanes. Read about the mysterious mansion of Skiles Test, and see the strange, blue, dancing orbs that beckon in the night. Stop for a drink at the Slippery Noodle Inn and catch a glimpse of spectral bootleggers and outlaws who still call the place their home. Climb the One Hundred Steps of Stepp Cemetery and plummet in a wave of terror through the brambles that surround the ancient burying place of a tormented Gypsy band. There's more than corn in Indiana; ghosts and fear stalk the fields under the nighttime sky.

American health care is in crisis because of exploding medical malpractice litigation. Insurance premiums for doctors and malpractice lawsuits are skyrocketing, rendering doctors both afraid and unable to afford to practice medicine. Undeserving victims sue at the drop of a hat, egged on by greedy lawyers, and receive eye-popping awards that insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors struggle to pay. The plaintiffs and lawyers always win; doctors, and the nonlitigious, always lose; and affordable health care is the real victim. This, according to Tom Baker, is the myth of medical malpractice, and as a reality check he offers "The Medical Malpractice Myth", a stunning dismantling of this familiar, but inaccurate, picture of the health care industry. Are there too many medical malpractice suits? No, according to Baker; there is actually too much medical malpractice, with only a fraction of the cases ever seeing the inside of a courtroom. Is too much litigation to blame for the malpractice insurance crisis? No, for that we can look to financial trends and competitive behavior in the insurance industry. Point by point, Baker - a leading authority on insurance and law - pulls together research that demolishes the myths that have taken hold and suggests a series of legal reforms that would help doctors manage malpractice insurance while also improving patient safety and medical accountability. "The Medical Malpractice Myth" is a book aimed squarely at general readers but with radical conclusions that speak to the highest level of domestic policymaking.

American health care is in crisis because of exploding medical malpractice litigation. Insurance premiums for doctors and malpractice lawsuits are skyrocketing, rendering doctors both afraid and unable to afford to continue to practice medicine. Undeserving victims sue at the drop of a hat, egged on by greedy lawyers, and receive eye-popping awards that insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors themselves struggle to pay. The plaintiffs and lawyers always win; doctors, and the non-litigious, always lose; and affordable health care is the real victim. This, according to Tom Baker, is the myth of medical malpractice, and as a reality check he offers this book, a stunning dismantling of this familiar, but inaccurate, picture of the health care industry. Are there too many medical malpractice suits? No, according to Baker, there is actually a great deal more medical malpractice, with only a fraction of the cases ever seeing the inside of a courtroom. Is too much litigation to blame for the malpractice insurance crisis? No, for that we can look to financial trends and competitive behavior in the insurance industry. Are these lawsuits frivolous? Very rarely. Point by point, Baker - a leading authority on insurance and law - pulls together the research that demolishes the myths that have taken hold about medical malpractice and suggests a series of legal reforms that would help doctors manage malpractice insurance while also improving patient safety and medical accountability. President Bush has made medical malpractice reform a priority in his last term in office, but if history is any indication, legislative reform would only worsen the situation and perpetuate the gross misunderstanding of it. The debate surely will be transformed by "The Medical Malpractice Myth", a book aimed squarely at general readers but with radical conclusions that speak to the highest level of domestic policymaking.

'Grotesque and depraved and above all very funny.' Ardal O'HanlonRobert Caligari is a thoroughly evil thirteen-year-old who gets his kicks from kicking pigs. Afer a humiliating episode with a bacon butty, Robert realizes just how much he loathes the human race - and his revenge is truly terrible. This subversive horror-fantasy from Tom Baker (ex-monk, ex-sailor, and the ultimate Doctor Who) is outrageous and funny, and since the hardback was published in 1999 has gone on to become a cult classic. It is illustrated throughout with b/w line drawings from David Roberts.