I have good to excellent experiences with the Avalanche books. The content is quite good (not 'top-notch' as in Book of the Righteous 5-star material, but QUITE good and solid) and useable as well as being a generally good read if you aren't a history buff for the era in question.
Also, I am a fan of the old-school Heavy Metal adult fantasy magazines (circa late 70's to mid-80's) and was quite happy to see Avalanche hiring Heavy Metal cover artists to do their covers. Sure, they have scantilly clad women on the covers of MANY (not all!) of their sourcebooks, which seems to put people off, but then again, I caught flack for having NON-SCANTILY clad women on the cover of a book we published from the same audience who seem to just not want to see women on the cover of a book. (which is a shame, if you ask me.)