Efficiency has almost doubled since 2008 but more importantly efficiency at non optimal angles has improved even more. Put together he's off by about an order of magnitude in the amount of land required.
The other factor that is missed is that solar panels are proving to be surprisingly non exclusive in their land usage.
If a breakthrough of solar technology occurs and the cost of photovoltaics
came down enough that we could deploy panels all over the countryside,
what is the maximum conceivable production? Well, if we covered 5% of
the UK with 10%-efficient panels, we’d have
10% × 100 W/m2 × 200 m2 per person ≈ 50 kWh/day/person.
I assumed only 10%-efficient panels, by the way, because I imagine that
solar panels would be mass-produced on such a scale only if they were
very cheap, and it’s the lower-efficiency panels that will get cheap first.
Utility scale panels today are commonly a bit over 20%.
You're right though that the book is not up to date, and getting long in the tooth in some aspects.