It has become a staple of political coverage to ask candidates what they're reading. They may once have answered honestly, but now they present lists that feel like they were approved by committee. I could easily fall into this trap here, putting forward an accumulation of titles I may or may not have read in the hope that you'll find me wide-ranging, thoughtful and worthy of a talk-show invitation.

To keep myself honest, I read H.L. Mencken, who punctured professional wind-machines with nearly every paragraph. Most of his targets were politicians (some convention speakers, he wrote, were "plainly on furlough from some home for extinct volcanoes"), and he loved political conventions, which he called "as fascinating as a revival or a hanging." "On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe" is my favorite Mencken volume (though he'd fillet me for making it seem as if I've read them all). The book covers the period from 1920 to 1936, but you'll be amazed at how little of the theater and posturing has changed.

One nice surprise about both of this year's big-party nominees is that they have written (or, in John McCain's case, co-written) extremely readable autobiographies. This isn't to say that we haven't before had nominees who have published books. We have. It's just that their books were dreadful. But McCain's "Faith of My Fathers" and Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father" both include passages of regret, mistake-admitting, self-analysis and other acts of candor that you may have thought were banned from American politics. Two young men searching for their identity in worlds pre-planned for them: That offers a lot of fascinating parallels, particularly as both fight charges of excessive self-regard.

Once you've acquainted yourself with Obama's pre-political voice, you can hear how it has evolved in public life. Start with his 2002 blast against the Iraq war, then move on to his star-making 2004 Democratic convention speech (both available at http://obamaspeeches.com ), his 2007 address to start his White House bid ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdJ7Ad15WCA) and his embattled primary-season speech on race ( http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords). Of all the many primary-day speeches he gave, the one after his New Hampshire defeat ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe751kMBwms) gives the most insight into the way he accepts a loss, and his speech the night he won the nomination ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI3FLN1t8 j0) suggests some of the themes he'll reprise at his nominating convention. Obama can be deeply analytically detached, and yet these speeches have brought people in the crowds to tears.

If you're in New York, you should spend a little time at the Paley Center for Media ( www.mtr.org/visiting-ny/info.htm). The viewing room is open to the public, and you can watch old footage of many of past political conventions there. My favorite is CBS's coverage of the 1960 Democratic convention (and not just because one of their gutsy floor reporters would become my mother). In one scene, Eleanor Roosevelt makes a surprise appearance to campaign for former Illinois governor Adlai E. Stevenson, warning that Sen. John F. Kennedy doesn't have the experience to be president. JFK is captured making his famous pitch to the Texas delegation about why the party needed to keep Lyndon B. Johnson in the Senate. "The old pro Lyndon Johnson isn't going to fade away," reports Edward R. Murrow, but not long after, another CBS correspondent files a report from in front of the smoke-filled room where the Pennsylvania delegation is meeting. The door opens, a slip of paper is handed to Murrow's colleague, and he reads that Kennedy has won the nomination.

Other famous convention moments worth watching are Bill Clinton's 1992 "Man From Hope" video, perhaps the best use of biography to frame a campaign. Ted Kennedy's 1980 "The Dream Will Never Die" speech, available on AmericanRhetoric.com, makes particularly poignant viewing this year as the liberal lion battles cancer. Other speeches worth reading and watching on that site include Ann Richards's display of searing wit in 1988 and Barry Goldwater's barn-burner in 1964. And will allegedly Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's cross-over speech at the Republican convention include as much spittle and as many round-house punches as Zell Miller's attack on John Kerry did in 2004?

If you would prefer convention-themed theater to a theater-themed convention, try my two favorites from Gore Vidal. The first is his raucous debate during the 1968 Democratic convention with conservative commentator William F. Buckley ( www.pitt.edu/{tilde}kloman/vidal.mp3). The two traded personal insults while veteran war correspondent Howard K. Smith sat between them, no doubt having combat flashbacks. The second is Vidal's play "The Best Man," which was turned into a 1964 film starring Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson. The drama includes peccadilloes, drinking and power plays and comes to a thrilling conclusion at a political convention. We should be so lucky this year.

John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and the author of "On Her Trail: My Mother, Nancy Dickerson, TV News' First Woman Star."