looking at the pseudocode provided in Game Programming Gems, it is pretty much straightforward for the most part - except for one thing. It mentions searching thru "successors" and building a path and stuff. what are the successors? is it basically a list of parents which is essentially the path to and from the start and goal nodes?

You should read everything here:

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/gameprog.html#Paths