I took Gantner's history of California class over the summer. The guy is an awesome lecturer with an expansive vocabulary. Very confident and knowledgeable. His political views are very left wing, and once or twice he digressed into full on rants. This became a little distracting for me as I am quite conservative. But Gantner is very respectful towards students, and never made anyone uncomfortable for disagreeing with him. He is hilarious as well, and a few of his bitter one liners had me dying.

As far as assignments, my class was not typical as Gantner was experiencing a family emergency at the time. Our grade ended up being comprised of a single paper, which I put a weekend into and finished with an A. I highly Gantner for anybody who enjoys strong lectures with a lot of humor on the side.

He lectures really well and is pretty funny. He gave us the final questions before hand, but they were pretty tough questions overall. If you have to take a history class, take his. Its not dry, as most history classes can be and you know whats going to be on the exams.

Cool professor. loves the dodgers,interesting class about California. Will learn nothing you haven't learned if you went to grade school in California.

Gantner's probably the easiest professor in the history department but also the least concerned about student learning. His speciality is American history, and in his lectures he takes up the persona of a grumpy old man. He has an incredibly sarcastic, angry sense of humor, and his comments about modern society are quite a sight to behold. To put it simply, his lectures are never boring. As for the way he sets up his class, he usually gives ALL the questions in advance for his exams, and they're pretty easy and self explanatory. This is the class for an easy A. But if you expect to get to know Gantner, become buddies with him in office hours, or have him answer your questions, he's the wrong guy. Gantner often ditched his office hours, which may be understandable considering his two jobs, two young kids, and hurried schedule. But he does have the commitment to fulfill as a professor. That detail aside, anyone should want to take him, for his dry as sandpaper sense of humor, and his easy A friendly exam setup.

Professor Gantner's class is entirely based on the readings; the first day of class he told everyone their attendance and participation wouldn't affect their grades at all. The midterm and final (about 4 pages each) are based on topics from the readings, and they make up the entirety of the class grade. The due dates are pretty flexible, but that was a result of being incredibly vague (we were told different things on the syllabus, in class, and in office hours.) The class itself is interesting if you want to actually learn about California history (especially when Professor Gantner shows historic pictures) but entirely irrelevant if you just want to get a good grade in the class.