Tuesday night found the Barnes and Noble at Union Square crowded with Malcolm Gladwell admirers, eagerly awaiting his book signing event. The release of Gladwell’s latest book—Outliers: The Story of Success—was met with anticipation by fans and critics alike.

With two international bestsellers under his belt as well as many years of writing experience for The New Yorker and the Washington Post, Gladwell decided to tackle the question of success—what makes some people successful while others remain mediocre? Outliers attempts to answer this question, citing examples like Bill Gates, The Beatles, and even some New York lawyers. Being born in the first few months of the year, he argues, gives an advantage to Canadian hockey players. The work ethic that is a fundamental part of Asian cultures is responsible for their seemingly natural mathematical skills, and certain cultures’ emphasis on respect for authority figures can hinder the success of their pilots. Gladwell argues all this and more in his new book.

The event at Barnes and Noble was not a book reading. In fact, Gladwell never read from his book. Instead, he told anecdotes that proved the general point he wanted to make in his book. He launched the event with a long story about the Turners and the Howards—two families from Harlan Kentucky that got into a murderous feud. Though the story was interesting, it was also long, and Gladwell took his time in getting to the point. Here it is in a nutshell: back when there were no supermarkets, people who lived in rural areas depended on their livestock for survival. Their top priority was protecting their animals from being stolen; reputation was not important. On the other hand, people who lived in the communal atmosphere of towns or cities valued their reputation much more. Thus, people from the country were more likely to get into murderous fights than people from the city. Gladwell spoke about a study that proved that this same conclusion is true today, though perhaps not to as great an extent. His conclusion, and the point of the anecdote, is that where people come from—their ancestors, their culture, their community—affects who they are and who they will become.

Gladwell continued to tell other anecdotes, some from his book, others from personal experience. Despite a preponderance of what seemed to be overgeneralizations, what he said was intriguing because it combined common sense with concrete evidence and scientific analysis. That Gladwell has the special talent of conveying all of this in an entertaining and easy-to-read way was an added bonus. And his deceptively simple anecdotes turn out to be unexpectedly insightful.

Reviews disagree about Outliers. While The Times says that Gladwell’s cultural and historical emphasis “plays down the role of individual grit and talent to the point where he seems to be sketching a kind of theory of social predestination,” Entertainment Weekly says that Outliers might be “his best and most useful work yet,” and that his anecdotes are each “a plateful of brain food that tastes like salty peanuts.”

Despite the mixed reviews, nobody challenges the validity of Outliers. According to Time magazine, Gladwell’s goal was to “adjust our understanding of how people like [Bill Gates, the Beatles, and fancy lawyers] get to where they are.” He’s certainly done that.