This is NOT a Buddhist book in any way, and the author is not a Buddhist. However, in my experience, the majority of people either believe subjective idealism, or related things that are pretty much the same, like phenomenalism, etc. or they get far away from that silliness, but get stuck at representational realism. Thus, being Theravada, which is a form of direct realism, can feel alienating, when discussing these things with anyone else. The sense is that others feel you are stuck on some kind of outmoded understanding of reality that has no support in contemporary times.
It seems no one in contemporary philosophy supports direct realism. In fact, the very term has become a pejorative, and is usually rendered “naive realism”, or similar. But I finally found a respectable philosopher who makes a really strong case for it. On the macro level, it is compatible with Theravada, broadly speaking, as both agree that we are seeing the outside world, while the vast majority of philosophies say that we never see the outside world (representational realism), or that it doesn’t even exist (subjective idealism, phenomenalism, many others), or other absurd conclusions. When we get down to dhammas, and all the other specifics of Theravada, there’s no reason to make a comparison. Hence, why this is in the Lounge category.
On a side note, the author has also written extensively on morality, and supports it being an innate thing that can be demonstrated to actually exist as part of what makes up a human. While there surely are some crossovers on simple things like the five precepts, I doubt it matches up significantly with more in depth Theravada morality, however, in a world where the majority of people seem to be falling for moral relativism, it is refreshing to see someone making a strong case for morality as more than just a cultural artefact or some other nonsense. That said, I think Huemer is actually on the same page as the Buddha in at least that the five precepts are universal, and have always been so (though they might disagree on the intoxicants one, depending on how strict it is interpreted). Though I’ve not read enough of his work to say for sure.