One of the best UCLA professors by far. Very kind, approachable, lectures are clear and concise, you can tell he is very passionate about what he is teaching. TA’s are also great! Overall, I would take this class again. One tip is to stay caught up on the readings, pay attention to lectures, and manage your time well. The research paper was 15 pages so pretty long and did take a while to complete but he gives you a generous amount of time to finish it. Additionally, he gives you the study guide for the midterm and final from the beginning of the quarter. Questions are slightly hard to answer but his office hours are very helpful. Overall, he is such an amazing professor which made the topics interesting. I learned a lot from his class!

Professor James is very knowledgeable about the subject and knows how make this course interesting. If you are really interested in the American Presidency, and do not mind to put in a lot of effort, then you will earn an A. It is all about smart planning of your time, for midterm, paper and the final. Do all the readings and be honest to yourself. No pain, no gain for this instructor. I received an A+ and definitely would take James again. He does reauire a lot of work, but he is clear and straightforward. No surprises. also I am selling all the books for this course really cheap. **********

The class is hard period. And there is lots of reading. But doable class. I am also selling the books and I have study guides as well. Shoot me a txt of u want to but my books.
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i am selling the books for this class email me at *************
good price for ALL BOOKS

Selling the textbooks for cheap. Text me at ********** :)

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.

Very straightforward class. Professor is very approachable and helpful. If you are looking for an easy pol sci class, take this one. A lot of reading ,but you don't really have to do it to pass.

This is the second course I've taken with this professor and I fell that he is one of the better professors that I have taken. This class requires a lot of memorization. It includes a lot of economics topics so that made it a bit harder to understand. Overall great professor and great class.

Good amount of work, but it's manageable. I personally like the way he organizes exams (giving you questions in advance) but it does mean more studying. James is a good lecturer, and the class is very interesting.

Go into this class with some vague idea of what you want to research, a short list of professors you have in mind that you may want to advise you, and some work ethic, and you'll be rewarded.

Professor James is great. UCLA is lucky to have him. If you've taken him in another course and think you know his deal, you don't. He really puts his all into this course, cares about every single student, and advocates for you to succeed. Working with him was awesome.

The workload might seem like a lot on paper (5 4-page papers, combined for a 12-15 page final), but when you write about stuff you're interested in it makes it way more manageable (sounds corny but it's true).

I recommend this class to anyone interested in grad school, legitimately interested in political science research, or just wants a break from the redundancy of undergrad poli sci coursework (midterm, final, prompt-response paper, etc).