You can learn anything you need to from the book. The primary sources book sucked horribly, so just read what you have to in order to get through the discussions. His jokes are witty, but there's too many and they're just low quality and I'm someone who usually enjoys witty jokes.

The grading really depends on the TA who's in charge of your entire grade, so if you decide to take this class or professor, hope to god that you get a good TA.

Other than the textbook, you don't need to read the supplementaries at all and won't be quizzed on it. Yes, his lectures can be boring, but his jokes aren't that bad...

I took this class because it was a GE even though I passed the AP easily (I'm on the new GE Schedule where AP courses don't get you out of GEs). His lectures are boring, unorganized, and his jokes are horrible. SO many people laugh at them and I'm wondering if these people have a life because they seriously are the worst jokes. And this is coming from a person who finds stupid jokes funny like "Why can't the bike stand on its own....because it is TWO TIRED." Yeah his jokes are 100x worse than that one right there. Tests are a joke, he gives out "review sheets" where he basically gives the questions out in advance. He also dresses VERY bad and unprofessional (I think Professors should dress in a professional manner since they are professionals). Otherwise class is a breeze

Prof. Frank was the first prof. that I had at UCLA. His lectures were slow, boring, pre-written, and included dry jokes with no correlation to the course. Certain people in the class would not be quiet in the front row, disrupting all of our learning and the prof. would not do anything about it. Perhaps he is better teaching upper division courses... but I do not recommend taking any of his lower division courses. I could not stay awake for a single lecture. If all the history professors are like this at UCLA, I may seriously consider switching majors.