When superstar tenor Luciano Pavarotti died about a month ago, on Sept. 6 at age 71 of pancreatic cancer, most of the TV and radio accounts I heard and the newspapers obituaries I read credited Pavarotti with making the best-selling classical CD of all time, the first of the "Three Tenors" albums, which has sold worldwide so far about 15.5 million copies of "units," as the industry likes to say.

Luciano should be so lucky.

According "The Life and Death of Classical Music," British music critic Norman Lebrecht's new devastating and entertaining look behind the classical recording industry from its beginning with Edison rolls to LPs, CDs and I-Pod downloads, the all-time best-selling classical CD title is Richard Wagner's "The Ring" cycle of four mammoth operas overseen in a pioneering premiere recorded performance by the late conductor Sir Georg Solti, the former Chicago Symphony Orchestra maestro who held the record for the most Grammys by any classical artist.

In Lebrecht's list of the Top 25 classical recordings, the first "Three Tenors" album clocks in second while the second "Three Tenors" is No. 4. But Pavarotti sold lots of other recordings: His "O Holy Night" CD of Christmas music comes in No. 9 with 3 million; his crossover album of Neopolitan songs "O Solo Mio" comes in No. 15 with 2 million.

Well, maybe if you add them all up, Pavarotti is the highest selling classical artist on record?

Wrong again.

According to Lebrecht, that honor goes to the tyrannical and temperamental ex-Nazi German conductor Herbert van Karajan who sold some 200 million recordings (including five cycles of Beethoven symphonies).

The runner-up sold only half as many.

And that runner-up would be Luciano Pavarotti at 100 million records. (That figure may change soon, though. His death has sparked massive sales, and recently Pavarotti alone counted for many of the Top 10 classical bestsellers at amazon.com.)

For the sake of comparison, Solti sold a total of about 50 million recordings, while opera diva Maria Callas, conductor-pianist-composer Leonard Bernstein, flutist James Galway, tenor Placido Domingo and conductor Neville Marriner come in about tied with about 30 million each.

As you can tell from these excerpts, Lebrecht's book (a $14.95 paperback from Anchor) is an engaging, detailed-filled read about the rise and fall of the classic recording industry.

Turns out that there have been many ups and downs over the years. And as an added bonus: Lebrecht includes a list of 100 best and 20 worst recordings ever made.

How many of each are in your library?

The book is a fun combination of serious scholarship and gossipy trash talk, full of great stories and memorable profiles of some very big egos and some very great talent, all competing for big if diminishing dollars and, of course, fame.

But just to put it all in perspective, according to Lebrecht, the grand total of all classical recordings comes to between 1 and 1.3 billion - about the same number as the Beatles alone have sold.

So, one is left wondering, what comes next in the saga of classical music recordings?