What are the most popular parenting advice manuals?  I want a list of
. books such as Dr. Spock's child rearing guide or Murkoff's 
"What to Expect the First Year" book.  They need
to be comprehensive reference guides that deal with the first few years
of infancy and include behavioral and medical information.  I do not want
books that are specific for a certain type of child nor certain type of
parent, but rather general "how to" books.  I need the answer to
include the criteria used to ascertain "most popular" (eg. what are
their sales numbers, etc.)
ascertain their popularity

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 03 Jun 2004 12:47 PDT

Hello there,

There are a number of sites that list best-selling books by category,
and I can readily compile a list of about 20-30 current bestselling
"how to raise your child" type of books.  If that would meet your
needs, let me know.

However, there are one or two things to be aware of: 

--the sites do not provide data on the number of books sold -- they
simply rank the bestsellers #1, #2, etc.

--these would be books that are hot right now and are selling
currently -- within the past few weeks, say -- so the list may not
include some recognizible names like Dr Spock's Baby Book.

Some of the names appearing as top-sellers on current lists are:

--  What to Expect the First Year

--  The Baby Book

--  On Becoming Babywise

--  Trees Make the Best Mobiles:  Simple Ways to Raise Your Child in a
Complex World


and so on...


As you can see, all of the books are oriented towards the mainstream
child (rather than a special-needs child), but several are oriented
towards particular aspects of parenting and not are not necessarily
"comprehensive" in the sense of including A-to-Z information on
medical emergencies, finding a good pediatrician, how to properly
adjust a child safety seat, etc.

Would this type of list meet your needs?

Let me know if I should post a full list of best-sellers as an answer
to your question.


Thanks

pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Question by grayfishstick-ga on 03 Jun 2004 13:53 PDT

Sounds like you are running into the same problems I have.
I really need some kind of empirical evidence of why
and how they are ranked (eg. sales data, etc.).  I also
need something a bit more than a ranking of "the 
most recent weeks" because I want a list that
includes the most popular books such as Spock.
Having non-comprehensive books in the list is less
of a problem because I could eliminate them
myself, but I would still need data on sales
for the ones that remain.

You can find a few great Parenting Books on the following link:

http://modernmom.info/channels/parenting/parenting-books.html