I have this trilogy on my radar, so I'm glad to hear you speak well of it. You steered me well so far with Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Massey's Peter the Great biography, both of which I've thoroughly enjoyed. At the moment I'm reading William Manchester's two Churchill biography volumes, then I'm going to read Shirer's Collapse of the Third Republic, but I want to read The Civil War as well at some point after that.