Everyone has pretty much said everything that needs to be said about Morony and history 9D. Yes, he is by far the worst lecturer to the point where it is insulting that students are expected to go to his lectures. That said, don't go to the lectures. It is honestly a waste of time. The TA's are pretty good. I had Reem Bailony and she was very sweet. It's more than sufficient if you skim the assigned reading. All in all, I didn't learn much from the class but it was by far a very easy A.

History 9D:

The first thing I have to say is that this class might be one of the most pointless I've ever experienced.

That being said, I got an A with pretty much minimal effort.

And that's not just me being arrogant; pretty much everyone in the class is in the same boat.

Morony is a chill guy, but his lectures are horrible. His slides are formatted in a second-grade fashion with no capital letters or punctation, making you try to figure out what is a sentence and what isn't.

He posts the lectures online, so I must say going to lecture is not necessary. In fact, I skipped about 90% of them, as did most others.

Grade breakdown:
Course is out of 300 points-

100- Map exercise (ridiculously easy map exercise that you can take home for a week and fill in via some internet research. And its work one third of your grade!)

50- Discussion (TA's are super chill and pretty much teach you anything you'll take from the class)

50- Take home Midterm Essay (I didn;t read the two books you're supposed to draw from, but your TA should spell out what they want you to include. Here's a hint: Asabiyya)

100- Two question essay Final (Morony gives a 12 question study guide ahead of time, so you will be prepared)

Bottom line: Lecture isn't necessary, first two books (Hourani/Ibn Khaldun) aren't really necessary-- but you should have them for the MT essay writing. Go to discussion, read the Gelvin book, and you should be set for an A.

I took this class before I found out about BruinWalk. The other reviewers of Morony pretty much hit the class spot on. He reads off his powerpoints, which are mainly filled with random trivia, dates, and pictures that are irrelevant and impossible to remember. Don't bother going to the lectures, except maybe for the midterm which is given end-Oct, early-Nov. He gets his information from the Hourani book and even just takes sentences out of it. His midterm prompt sounds like he woke up one morning and thought, "Oops, I forgot to assign a midterm. Guess I'll make it up five seconds before class." The TAs are much more approachable and competent as teachers.

Anyway, just as a last warning, even if you have the greatest interest in the subject and want to be a full-blown historian, do not waste your time with this class. The professor and his lectures twice a week just make the class not worth it.

Professor Morony is a very DIFFERENT man. He is one of the worst lecturers I have ever experienced. He made me fall asleep everytime I was in lecture, that's if I was there. You do not need to go to class. You can literally just enroll and never come. There are so many books you need for his class, a lot of reading, for absolutely no point at all. My TA was my lifesaver in this class--I can not tell you one thing that I learned to be completely honest. If you are looking for a GE that will make you fall asleep, take him! I got an A and did the minimum.

I took this class as a history GE because I was tired of American History and I thought this class would be more interesting. I was wrong. It was extremely boring.
The first half of the quarter just taught about Islam. Only the last 2 lectures had to do with topics that were relatively modern (1900s). But, you don't even have to go to lectures. If you take the class just skip them. They don't count for anything and I just fell asleep in them anyways. You only have to go to get the midterm prompt (but you can just get them from a friend) and to turn in your midterm.
The reading sucks. We had to read 3 books. The first 2 were very boring and cured my insomnia. The third book was better and didn't put me to sleep.
Discussions are mandatory and depend on your TA. For discussions we had homework which was answering 1 or 2 questions a week based on reading from the book (nothing from lecture). Some TAs are stricter than others but I had a nice one which was a plus. You can miss up to 2 discussion or else you get no discussion points.
As boring as the class was, it wasn't too hard to pass. We had a map as homework that we had to label and turn into discussion and that counted as 1/3 of the grade (with bonus points possible). Discussion counted as 1/6 of our grade and was decided by the TA. The midterm was a take home paper and was 1/6 of our grade. And the final was 1/3 of our grade, but we got a list of possible questions before hand. The final was 2 questions and we just had to write an essay for each question. We had a choice of what questions we wanted to answer so the final was pretty easy.
Overall, the class was boring and had a lot of reading but it was a relatively easy A.

I took this as a GE because I was really interested in the Middle East. However, this class is not a history of the Middle East as the course title suggests. The whole class was an incredibly boring, extricating history of Islam.

This class was absolutely terrible. I hated every single minute of it. Morony is a HORRIBLE lecturer. There's no point in even going to class.

Morony required us to buy three books and a reader, but I never opened up any of them. The only good part of the class is that there is a map exercise that is ridiculously easy worth 1/3 of the grade.

It was a terrible decision to take History 9D. There was nothing enjoyable about the class except for the way his style closely mocked Teddy Roosevelt. If not for that, I may have gone crazy.

The material for this class is extremely interesting but Prof. Morony has very boring lectures. It is hard to pay attention or even take notes because he talks so fast with sophisticated language. He is obviously a smart guy but he is definitely the kind of professor that rather be researching than teaching. The TAs for this class are awesome. Disscussion section is mandatory for this class but that is okay because you will learn the material there instead of the lecture. The TAs are the kind of people that you could hang and talk with whenever you see them. They are really fun people. There was only one paper for this class which was painful to write. We were told to compare the two books required for the class. One of the books was completely inappropriate for a GE class. I would try to avoid Prof. Morony. I thought I could deal with Morony regardless of his poor teaching because I am interested in the subject but one really can't. I recommend this class but NOT with this professor.