A typical guidebook to New York City is filled with lists of museums and parks and entertainment ideas. But there's another way to get to know the city — and that's the focus of Nicolas Heller's new book.

It's a closer look at the people behind 100 small businesses across the five boroughs. They are profiled in "New York Nico's Guide to NYC."

Heller said the collection is meant to document a moment, writing that he's "hopeful that these small businesses will always have a place here, and that in twenty, fifty, or one hundred years when somebody walks into a bookstore and sees a copy of this book, they’ll open it up and find that all the places we went to are still in business.”

He joined "Mornings On 1" Thursday to discuss what inspired the book in the first place.