teacheranon here. History Books:
20th century dictators are the same as Gandhi. They are Revolutionary Leaders modernizing and rising up against colonialism. (pic from Holt McDougal Modern World History 2012)
My parents were John Birchers, too. When I was a teen, after 2 years at Ivy college, I asked her incredulously why they had been against communism. It seemed so enlightened, and the opposition so tin-hatty. She said, "Well, we thought it was tyranny." I'd never heard an answer like that from all my liberal schooling. FFwd several yrs into my "recovery" from liberalism, it's 2012, and I'm crushed Hussein won again. I'd listened to Rush and thought Hussein would lose. My mom said, "Well, as a conservative, I've just got used to losing. But you have to keep plugging along anyway." Now she follows Q. Big payoff I hope for her in her 79th year!
The kids are learning on i-pads now. Texts and a zillions "sources" are read all jumbly. I work in private schools so can't speak for common core BS, but it all depends on the teacher's slant. There are good teachers, and they all think they're teaching "critical thinking", but unf. they mostly live in an ideological bubble. The "global history" view is the only ideological slant acceptable, and it's a narrative of Progress towards globalism, anti-nationalism, anti-colonialism, pro-SJW, seeing history through lenses of this-and-that group. But honestly, that page I capped surprised me.
Palmer/Coulton History of the Modern World c. 1950-1984. Presents Bolshevik revolution as compare/contrast with French Revolution, pretty fairly, including 1917 vs. Reign of Terror. Interesting to me that it groups National Socialism with Socialism.
Additionally, the 1984 text is all text with a few black and white photos, no charts, interactives, or the like. Not saying the latter are bad, but when your book is full of that, there is less serious analysis for students to confront.
Furthermore, the chapter on The Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union (extending to the 1930s) is 44 pages long, thick text like previous photo. versus 13 pages in the 2012 book, much of them taken up with charts, photos, "case study" on totalitarianism, etc. That's a big difference in depth of analysis and facts offered to students.