New Books Network

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New Books Network episodes

May 27 Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Book Marketing Machine with Louise Brogan
What if in the age of AI generated content, the most important part of being visible online is just being a human? In this episode of The Publishing Playbook, host Sarah Russo sits down with Louise Brogan to talk about how the most powerful book marketing tool accessible to authors isn't Instagram or TikTok — it's LinkedIn. Louise is a LinkedIn expert, digital marketing strategist, author of "Raise Your Visibility Online," and host of a YouTube channel with the same name. Sarah and Louise discuss how authors can stop overlooking LinkedIn and start using it strategically. And they cover it all, from optimizing your profile and beating the algorithm to repurposing book content and building a newsletter audience. Louise also explains that as AI content grows on social media, authentic human voices matter more than ever.
If you work in publishing marketing or PR — or you're an author trying to build your platform — this episode is essential listening. For more information on Louise’s work, visit her website: Louise's Website
Books mentioned in this episode:
“Raise Your Visibility Online” by Louise Brogan
“The Barbecue at No. 9” by Jennie Godfrey
Key Moments
01:11 — How Louise Brogan Built a LinkedIn Empire 🚀
Louise shares how she accidentally became a LinkedIn expert in 2017, when she decided to niche down to the one platform nobody else wanted.
03:16 — Why Most People Are Afraid to Post on LinkedIn 😰
Louise reveals that only 3% of LinkedIn users are creators — and explains why fear of judgment is keeping the other 97% silent.
04:30 — LinkedIn Is Like Your Favorite Industry Conference 🎤
Louise breaks down her signature analogy for understanding LinkedIn: showing up, making conversation, and not leaving without talking to anyone.
07:28 — The Profile Mistakes You're Probably Making ⚠️
Louise walks through the most common LinkedIn profile errors she sees, including why burying your key information and skills is killing your visibility.
13:20 — Why a LinkedIn Newsletter Is More Powerful Than a Substack 📬
Louise explains how publishing a LinkedIn newsletter automatically notifies your entire network — and lands directly in subscribers' email inboxes.
21:16 — Your Book's Chapters Are Your Content Strategy 📖
Louise outlines her "Create Once, Publish Everywhere" methodology and explains why authors who already have a book have everything they need to show up consistently on LinkedIn.
Find Louise Online:
Louise Brogan's Website
Louise's YouTube
Find Louise on LinkedIn
Louise’s book: Link
Follow Sarah on LinkedIn:
Sarah Russo
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29 min
May 27 Laura Tisdall, "We Have Come to Be Destroyed: Growing Up in Cold War Britain" (Yale UP, 2026)
What was life like for young people in twentieth century Britain? In We Have Come to Be Destroyed: Growing Up in Cold War Britain (Yale University Press, 2026), Dr Laura Tisdall, a Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at Newcastle University tells the story of this era through the eyes of children and young
people, offering a radical reinterpretation of Britain’s Cold War age.
The book offers a wide range of perspectives, from young people’s hopes
and anxieties for the future, through popular culture during the Cold
War, to changes in schools and the education system. The analysis also
draws on detailed engagements with feminist and gay rights campaigns,
and highlights the experiences of young people of colour, blending
microhistories of individual experience with a broader narrative that
transforms our existing knowledge of the Cold War. The book will be
essential reading across the arts and humanities, as well as for social
science scholars and anyone interested in knowing more about recent
British history.
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37 min
May 27 Hannah Shepherd, "The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region" (U California Press, 2025)
In The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region (U California Press, 2025), Hannah Shepherd examines the shared histories of Pusan and Fukuoka over the eight decades from Japan's forced opening of Korea's ports in 1876 to the end of the Korean War in 1953. One city was Korean, the other Japanese; one was a burgeoning colonial port, the other a provincial city buoyed by imperial expansion. Wars, colonization, and capitalist industrialization forged intimate connections between the two, knitting together an imperial region that transcended its maritime boundaries. Drawing on both Japanese and Korean archives, and emphasizing the concept of imperial urbanization, Shepherd challenges traditional views of empire and urban growth and shows how local networks, migration, and capital flows shaped the region's exploitative and uneven geographies. The waters between Fukuoka and Pusan narrowed through intensified interactions that continued even after the end of empire, creating enduring legacies for the postwar and postcolonial eras.
Dr. Hannah Shepherd is Assistant Professor of History at Yale University.
Dr. Samee Siddiqui is Assistant Professor of World History at Drury University.
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1 hr 19 min
May 27 Christopher S. Celenza, "The Evolution of Western Thought: Volume 1, From the Ancient World to Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
A rich and immersive reinterpretation of the history of Western thought, The Evolution of Western Thought: Volume 1, From the Ancient World to Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2025) – the first in a major trilogy – explores the transmission and development of philosophical ideas from Plato and Aristotle to Jesus, Paul, Augustine and Gregory the Great. Christopher Celenza recalibrates philosophy's story not as abstract argumentation but rather as lived practice: one aimed at excavating wisdom and shaping life. Emphasizing the importance of textual tradition and elucidation across diverse contexts, the author shows how philosophical and religious ideas were transformed and readjusted over time. By focusing on the centrality of Christianity to Western thought, he reveals how ancient ideas were alchemized within religious frameworks, and how – across the centuries – ethical and intellectual traditions intersected to shape culture, memory, and the pursuit of sagacity. Ever attentive to ongoing conversations between past and present, this expansive intellectual history brings perspectives to the subject that are both nuanced and fresh.
Christopher S. Celenza is an American scholar of Renaissance history and the current James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, where he is also a professor of history and classics
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.
YouTube Channel: here
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1 hr 10 min
May 27 Janet Hinson Shope and Richard Pringle, "Campus Whisper Networks: Knowing with Sexual Assault Survivors" (Rutgers UP, 2026)
Campus Whisper Networks: Knowing with Sexual Assault Survivors (Rutgers University Press, 2026) examines how personal knowledge about
student sexual assault circulates within college campus communities.
Based upon both qualitative and quantitative survey data, Dr. Janet
Hinson Shope and Dr. Richard Pringle's research demonstrates that
students who have been sexually assaulted tell someone—almost always a
friend. Most college students know someone who has been assaulted.
Simply knowing, by means of relationships, that one or more peers have been assaulted affects the knowers, and the effects reverberate unevenly across campuses. 
Dr. Shope and Dr. Pringle highlight the structural properties that prohibit
relational knowledge from becoming official institutional knowledge,
confining it to whispers and secrecy within informal spheres of
knowledge. The rules governing the circulation of such knowledge create
an uneven epistemic field of sexual assault. This uneven field is
consequential for the communities, affecting survivors and their
confidants and shaping student views of the college community. Campus Whisper Networks demonstrates how personal and institutional avoidance, both the “need to not know” and “no need to know,” creates knowledge gaps that hide the community’s wounds and prevent personal knowledge from becoming social knowledge. 
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
59 min
May 27 David Faflik, "Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation" (U Massachusetts Press, 2026)
A cultural history of race, resistance, and representation in a city divided by politics and play
When outfielder Bernie Carbo joined the Red Sox in 1974, he brought with him a toy gorilla named Mighty Joe Young that became the team’s unofficial mascot for several players and many in the local press. This seemingly innocent stuffed animal was introduced within a baseball team notorious for its stubborn discrimination, and during a particularly fraught era of racial discord in Boston. That June, after years of activism from the city’s Black community, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ruled that Boston must address the segregation of its schools through redistricting and busing. The ensuing racial animus to these policies led some of the city’s white residents to throw bananas and chant monkey sounds at African American students as they integrated the predominantly white South Boston High School. In this agitated atmosphere, cultural symbols like the Red Sox’s Mighty Joe Young mirrored and amplified the heightened racial tensions of Boston’s busing crisis.
Situated at the intersection of US cultural and social history, Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation (U Massachusetts Press, 2026) examines the surprising ties in 1970s Boston between the racial segregation of the city’s schools and the racial controversies expressed on and off the field of “Red Sox Nation.” “I found out in the black community why they don’t come out [to Fenway Park],” explained Black player Reggie Smith of his experiences with the Red Sox and the city during this period. “The team was the last to get Black players, and some of the things I hear out in the stands make me sick.” To understand these connections, Faflik erases the lines between politics and sport, which routinely blurred in a city suffused with an anti-Black racism that was both deceptively subtle and fiercely overt.
Drawing upon deep archival research from sources that have largely been ignored, such as the Black press of the time, Faflik offers a carefully nuanced portrait of Boston’s cultural life at a pivotal moment in the city’s history.
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42 min
May 27 Franziska Sittig and Noam Petri, "Intellectual Self-Destruction: How the West Gambles Away Its Future" (Ibidem Press, 2025)
In my recent conversation with Sittig, we explored her co-authored book Intellectual Self-Destruction: How the West Gambles Away Its Future (Ibidem Press, 2025), written with Noam Pitri and distributed by Columbia University Press. Drawing from her experiences as a German journalist and former student at Columbia University, Sittig offers a deeply personal and rigorously documented account of what she describes as a growing “anti-Western coalition” within academic spaces across the United States and Europe.
At the heart of the book is a provocative thesis: that the West’s greatest threat may not come from external adversaries, but from an internal intellectual shift—one that prioritizes ideological certainty over open inquiry, and moral posturing over evidence-based reasoning. Sittig and Pitri trace this pattern across campuses, where unlikely alliances have formed between strands of “woke” theory and political Islam. While these movements differ philosophically, Sittig argues that they converge tactically in their shared suspicion of Western liberal values and their embrace of absolutist moral frameworks.
Our discussion brought these ideas into sharp focus through Sittig’s own experiences. As a student, she encountered resistance—and at times hostility—when attempting to research topics such as Islamism and terrorism in Europe. What should have been a space for intellectual exploration instead became, in her telling, a site of constraint. This tension between inquiry and ideology echoes one of the book’s central historical parallels: the case of Trofim Lysenko in the Soviet Union, where political dogma overrode scientific truth with devastating consequences.
Sittig also details the evolving dynamics of campus activism, particularly in the aftermath of October 7th. She points to organized student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and examines their funding structures and messaging strategies. Of particular concern, she notes, are instances of social media activity and organizing efforts that appeared to anticipate or justify acts of violence, raising urgent questions about the boundaries between activism and endorsement.
Yet the book is not only a critique—it is also a warning grounded in historical consciousness. Referencing moments such as the intellectual climate surrounding Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Sittig suggests that the current moment reflects a longer trajectory in which academic culture has increasingly struggled to balance respect for cultural difference with a commitment to universal principles like free speech.
Despite the book’s ambition to reach a wide and ideologically diverse audience, Sittig shared that its reception has largely mirrored existing divides. Readers already aligned with its arguments have embraced it, while critics have remained unconvinced. The elusive “middle ground,” it seems, remains difficult to access—perhaps itself a reflection of the polarization the book seeks to diagnose.
And yet, there is a note of cautious optimism. The very fact that Intellectual Self-Destruction was published and distributed through major academic channels suggests that spaces for dissenting perspectives still exist, even if they are contested.
As educators, scholars, and engaged citizens, we are left with a pressing challenge: how do we cultivate environments that encourage rigorous debate without collapsing into ideological conformity? Sittig’s work does not offer easy answers, but it insists that the question cannot be ignored.
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42 min
May 27 Damien Van Puyvelde, "The DGSE: A Concise History of France's Foreign Intelligence Service" (Georgetown UP, 2026)
France is a leading intelligence power, but we know very little about its premier intelligence agency: the Direction Générale de la Sécurité
Extérieure (DGSE). Damien Van Puyvelde's latest book, The DGSE: A Concise History of France's Foreign Intelligence Service (Georgetown University Press, 2026), examines France's foreign intelligence service from its rebranding as the DGSE in 1982 to the present.
It covers the legacies of the Second World War, how decolonization and the Cold War shaped the organization, the organization's workforce and leadership, as well as public and (pop) cultural perceptions and
representations of intelligence in France. The emergence of the DGSE,
following the election of socialist President Mitterrand, opened an era
of change, marked by a series of reorganizations and new threats over
the horizon. Some readers will recall the Rainbow Warrior fiasco, when
DGSE operators sank Greenpeace's flagship, causing the death of a
photographer in 1985. Others will be more familiar with the popular TV
show The Bureau, which portrays the lives of non-official cover DGSE officers operating in contemporary hotspots. These vignettes, just like much of the media coverage, paint a misleading portrait of the DGSE as a group of dedicated but reckless officers. Van Puyvelde shows how France's leading intelligence agency has successfully adapted to political and security requirements from the late Cold War to today's international security threats.
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55 min
May 27 Kanika Singh, "The Story of a Sikh Museum: Heritage, Politics, Popular Culture" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The Story of a Sikh Museum: Heritage, Politics, Popular Culture, published
by Cambridge University Press in July 2025, is a pioneering study on
Sikh museums, a unique phenomenon of contemporary India—for their sheer numbers, distinctive display, malleability and presence in multiple
cultural spheres and their political significance. This case study of
Bhai Mati Das Museum at Gurdwara Sisganj, Delhi, examines the process of creation of Sikh heritage through history, paintings, and museums, unearths networks of patronage, and analyses the ways in which specific versions of the Sikh past are used to make present-day claims. It is based on interviews with artists and patrons, material from personal and institutional archives, a visual analysis of Sikh popular art and a critical examination of the museum's narrative. This book brings together Sikh history, popular art, politics and museums to discuss some of the most important current debates (of nation, identity and heritage) and reveals new ways in which we may understand museums, especially in a non-Western context.
Kanika Singh is a historian, founder of Delhi Heritage Walks and Director at Centre for Writing & Communication at Ashoka University.
Harleen Kaur is a historian and urban studies scholar who recently completed her Joint PhD from National University of Singapore and King’s College London.
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40 min
May 27 Judith Hill, "Gothic: Building Castles in Post-Union Ireland" (Four Courts Press, 2026)
Castles speak. Especially in an age when they are no longer necessary. The Act of Union of 1800, which brought Ireland into closer association with
Britain, challenged the status of Irish landed proprietors, and not a
few responded by building castles. In Gothic: Building Castles in Post-Union Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2026) Dr. Judith Hill explores the projects of two
Irish proprietors: the Burys, later Lord and Lady Charleville, who
commissioned Francis Johnston, then Ireland’s most important architect,
to design Charleville Castle; and Lawrence Parsons, later 2nd Earl of
Rosse, who reimagined seventeenth-century Parsonstown House as early nineteenth-century Birr Castle. 
Architecturally the castles belong to Georgian Gothic, a style that in Britain is overshadowed by later nineteenth-century Gothic and is largely
overlooked in Ireland. In this fascinating new book, Dr. Hill investigates
Georgian Gothic in its own terms as both a British and Irish phenomenon,
demonstrating how antiquarian understanding, associative thinking,
awareness of family pedigree and historicised design ideas resulted in a
uniquely Irish response to the Gothic revival.
Using the ample surviving archives related to both families, she argues that
these architecturally original and significant castles eloquently
expressed their builders’ political and social concerns, making them
artefacts of cultural unionism.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
57 min