This class sucked the soul out of my life. Please think twice before taking this class, especially if you think it will be an Easy A for a polisci upper div fulfillment. The class consists of a midterm 30% final 30% paper (15 pages) 30% and participation/attendance in discussion 10%. This professor assigned about 5-6 books that you have to read throughout the quarter.. 10 WEEKS!! Which is insanely a lot especially if you have other classes you need to focus on. The midterm consists of 4 questions that you need to write a page - 2 pages about. He gives you the midterm and final questions upfront. For the midterm he gives you 15 questions that YOU NEED TO STUDY and he only chooses 4!!! So basically you need to study 15 one page and half to answer the questions that he will choose and for the final he gives you 20 questions that you need to study and again he only chooses 4 which he ONLY gives you an hour and 15 minutes to complete !! The final is hectic especially since there is a book you need to read to start writing your 15 page paper, and the book is a graduate level book which is SO difficult to comprehend. So meanwhile you have to study the 20-25 pages for the final, you also have to get started on your paper because its due a week before your final. No matter how much I read the books, attended class, studied the midterm/final -- I was ALWAYS behind. I would not recommend this class to my friends nor would I ever take a class with him again. Yeaaahhh, he was passionate with the way he taught and provided his lecture slides on CCLE, it was REALLY hard to keep up with this polisci class especially when my other polisci classes required me to write papers/study for tests as well!!! Please do yourself a favor and find another polisci class to fulfill your requirements. I took this class because the reviews seemed doable and I thought since I have the midterm/final questions upfront, I'll be okay. BUT I studied my ASSS off and literally did shitty and so did a lot of my friends, so SAVE YOURSELF because it is going to take SO much of your time to do this class (you will not have a social life, especially if you are taking other polisci class too)!

Class really isn't that bad everyone is just complaining. The readings aren't needed to do well in the class- which is the bulk of the work. Just listen to the lectures and participate in the discussiosn and you will be fine.

This class was super interesting and engaging. I learned tons about the Presidency and actually enjoyed James a lot. While I think his midterm and final are very oddly structured, I somewhat understand it seeing as there are a lot of theories in this class to cover. In terms of lectures, I thought the slides made a lot of sense and were very easy to follow. I loved all the examples he put into them to to prove his points/claims. He does go very fast though and can be hard to keep up with. In terms of readings, this class was overkill as there were 5 books assigned plus many articles. To be honest, you can get through this class without reading too much though as the TA sums up a lot of the material. I also want to shout out Soonhong as being a great TA and really making this class 100x more manageable! Overall, I think this class was super interesting and I would definitely take another class with James again and would recommend this class.

I really enjoyed this class. Prof is clear, concise, and understanding. His lectures are really important and work to help you understand the reading. There is a fair amount of reading, but everything is clarified in lecture. I recommend doing the reading after the lec. If you are a bad test taker then def don't take this class. It is heavily based on exams.

If you are taking this class, do not think that it will be easy to pass. James assigns a lot of reading every week and skimming it is not necessarily helpful because many of the questions on the midterm and the final are about the readings.
To be honest, the final paper is the hardest assignment I have ever had in college. He asked us to apply Steven Skowronek's theory of political time to the Biden and Trump presidencies.

With that being said, James' lectures are engaging and well organized. If you go to office hours, he will help you with whatever you need. I found it particularly touching that he sent me multiple emails with sources that would help me with my paper after I went to office hours.

I don't think this class would have been my first choice, but if you plan ahead enough and stay on top of the readings, it is doable.

I enjoyed the class; I think that while it was a lot of work, Prof. James was very passionate about what he was teaching, and I felt like I learned quite a bit from the course. Course involves two exams - one midterm and one final - along with a paper due towards the end of the year. While I was able to do it because the rest of my course load was lighter, I would definitely recommend starting the essay early, especially if you have a heavier course load. The readings were also a lot more than I have been used to compared to other courses (around 75-150 pages per week), but they are doable as long as you stay on top of them. Overall, I liked the course and would recommend anyone interested in the topic to take it.

Do yourself a favor and do NOT take this class. It is the absolute worst class I have taken at UCLA. Again, do not take this class if you want to have normal mental health.

This class for me was super difficult. There is a midterm and a final whose questions and distributed from the beggining of the course. There is 15 essay questions given for the midterm and 20 for the final and only 4 appear on the exam. In addition a 15 page essay is given. This class was super interesting and professor James is an amazing lecturer but it was overal a difficult course. It was unclear of how much information one was expected to include in the exams therefore study guides were over 40 pages long and difficult to memorize. I recommend working with other students to create study guides, and starting the process of studying early. I wouldnt waste my time reading each assigned material but rather focusing on answering those questions first and formost by looking at specific chapters which pertain to the readings. I read every assignment the first half of the quarter then for the most part stopped because it was impossible to keep up. I still received an A in the course because I focused on answering the questions and memorizing them. Long story short this class is not impossible to pass with an A but it is definintly not easy. Try to do things in advance and dont leave things to last minute.

I liked Professor James a lot. There is a lot of reading in this class and it is unevenly distributed on a week-by-week basis; some weeks there may be only 50 pages, some weeks there may be 150 pages. I found the readings to be pretty interesting on the whole. The reading upon which the final essay is a difficult read, but manageable.

I enjoyed his lectures a lot. Personally I find him funny and engaging - any reviews calling him boring or his lectures useless are fake news. However, he seldom finished any lectures within the period, he goes through the material very quickly, and he does not take a ton of questions in class. That doesn't bother me personally, but it is worth a mention. He is very nice outside of class. He is very personable and treats his students with respect.

The midterm and the final are the same format. The exams are not that hard but do require a fair bit of study; this is especially true for the final, which covers a much larger breadth of information than does the midterm. The essay is kind of a pain because the reading is difficult, but if you were to do ample research beforehand it would be manageable. I recommend his class to a friend; it is one of the better classes I have taken.

Very smart professor, not always the most accessable, but explains things well in class. All grading is done through TA's so he has nothing to do with your grading in the course, it is purely the TA's job. All of his lectures are verbatim from the slideshows, but I would still show up to class because he plays videos you can't see in the downloaded slideshow.

Class contains one midterm with 4 essay prompts, and one final with 4 page long essay prompts, each with 70 minutes to complete. Each of the 4 prompts he only expects 1 page long responses to, so they are basically long answers. He'll give between 15-20 of the potential prompts in advance and then randomly choose 4 of them for the midterm/final. The best way to study for the course is to prep notes and practice essays for each prompt and go to your TAs for prompts you don't understand.

There is a term paper essay due at the end of the quarter on the 'Politics President's Make' book, which is a hard as fuck book to read, but he'll explain the core concepts in class which will provide enough information to write the paper on. Don't stress about reading the whole thing, just go to class and TA's office hours.

There is a lot of reading, between 50-200 pages a week depending on the week. You can't skip any readings because each of the prompts on the final are based on the reading. Most aren't super hard to read, but it can be a lot.

Over all, good class, but did take some work.