The author says this is a book of philosophy. It is also social science, polemic, psychology, statistics, biography, economics, finance, politics and a few others.
I put this book down several times because I found the author infuriating at times and I found other books easier to read so my lazy self read them instead. However, it kept working its way to the top of the pile and I'm glad I finished it. I might read the next in the series.
The Black Swans are rare events that have huge impact. The book examines how our economic and political "experts" have misled us with their models because they completely ignore Black Swans which can wipe out all the benefits accrued until the event happens, such as Wall Street crashes, wars, epidemics, oil spills,...
There are a few chapters that discuss statistics (the maths, not the numbers), but they are flagged as technical. They don't explain if you don't already know and frankly they weren't much use to the extent I did know, as they was largely polemic to say that means, standard deviations, and more don't help when in Black Swan territory.
The author is very widely read and cites many authors I like in economics, philosophy and psychology, and introduced me to some more I might pursue.