jeff hobbs recounts the life and death of his former college roommate in "the short and tragic life of robert peace." jo becker in "forcing the spring," and in fire shut up in my bones, charles below recalls growing up in louisiana in the 1970s. >> one of the idiosyncrasies but also one of the beauties of small town america is that things kind of pass it by. and so you -- it is timeless in a way, and it is pastoral, and you do grow up very closely linked to nature which doesn't necessarily have the same kind of decade markers that the rest of the world does when you're looking at when you interact more with architecture as it moves forward and a lot of technology as it moves forward. we just did not have that. >> and that's a look at some of "the new york times" 100 notable books for 2014. to link to the full list and see selections from other publications, visit booktv's web site, booktv.org. >> live from new york, it's saturday night. and the authors are james andrew miller and thom shales. mr. miller, what was the point of this book? >> we had written a definitive -- what we wanted