Thrawn was awesome. I keep meaning to get an icon of him.
The Thrawn Trilogy was published pretty early on as far as novels went - Splinter of the Mind's Eye came first, and I think both of those short trios of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian books - but other authors can't seem to decide when they want to run with it and when they want to ignore it to have alien villains. It's been retconned into the prejudice existing, but getting overcome by some people.