The original Creature Collection beat the original Monster Manual to the shelves by a couple of months. Unfortunately, back in those early days of 3rd ed, not everyone fully understood how the rules worked, so you had things like constructs with Con scores and special attack save DCs just kinda made up and not based on any formula.
Definately get CCRevised. It also has the setting specific races in the appendix.
The last book, Strand Lands:Lost Tribes has sketchy info on 3 other continents, but lots of spells, monsters, templates, etc etc. A really neat book, if you don't mind the kinda non-standard feel of the settings (all arctic, all destert/egyptian/babylonian, all faux oriental).