Agents are ushering in a new era in Artificial Intelligence (AI) whereby they accomplish tasks in the world electronically that mere chatbots cannot do. Through running specialized code, they can communicate with a main thread – and even with each other. In this book, now in a second edition, Micheal Lanham keeps technical folk up to date with the latest developments.
In training, educators drill into IT folks’ heads to know how and why things work, not just that they work. This book shows how AI agents work through their integration with LLMs. It also shows how Model Context Protocol (MCP) communicates with servers that can achieve action.
In critique, this book lacks a depth that is found in other technical introductions to AI. It explains the lay of the land well by explaining how technologies work, but it doesn’t explain how to architect and build an AI agent in too much detail. As such, it limits itself to IT staff and does not expand to the developer community as much.
Overall, it takes a village of books to learn about AI agentic technology, and this book does a great job of communicating that vocabulary. Again, it serves the purpose of informing AI technical staff about how and why things work. I just wish it would talk more to developers, coders, and designers about architecture.
AI Agents in Action: Intelligent Workflows with LLMs, MCP, A2A, and More
By Micheal Lanham
Narrated by Julie Brierley
2nd Edition
Text copyright (c) 2026
Manning Publications
Audio copyright (c) 2026
Manning Publications
ASIN B0H8TNY834
Length: 10:53
Genre: Artificial Intelligence
www.amazon.com