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In impeachment, says the author, the civil trial standard of "preponderance of the evidence" should not be enough to remove a President. On the other hand, strictly applying the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof necessary for conviction in criminal cases could mean limping along with a President who the Senate and nation are convinced is guilty though not convicted. Black, a Yale law professor, suggests the test should be "overwhelming preponderance of the evidence."
His timely volume clearly and lucidly covers everything from what constitutes "high crimes and misdemeanors" to the scope of Executive privilege. It would be natural to wonder if the author is pro-or anti-Nixon. The measure of his book's achievement is that it tells the reader not what to think but what to think about.
HENRY AND OTHER HEROES by EZRA BOWEN 246 pages. Little, Brown. $6.95.
The author is a sports nut now edging toward 50. He grew up in fashionable Merion, Pa., member of a distinguished, divided and furiously competitive clan. His mother, Historian Catherine Drinker Bowen (Yankee from Olympus), apparently never lost at any sport. Bowen dreamed of becoming a triple-threat back at Princeton but became a pedestrian first baseman at Amherst, then an editor in New York. Years passed. Sports stars grew younger. Bowen grew older. Came the day when he could no longer take comfort even from the presence on the sporting scene of elderly prizefighters like Archie Moore, or the ageless prowess of Stan Musial.
This slender and often charming autobiography, in short, is about growing up, and the author admits that Peter Pan had absolutely the right idea about the whole painful subject. There are moments when Bowen cannot seem to decide whether to remember the past as Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield. No matter. He spares us any anguished memories about teen-age sex. He is full of sentiment but no self-pity. His quotes and anecdotes are often sharp and funny. "If thee marries for money," his Quaker stepfather once admonished him, "thee surely will earn it." Most important, Bowen writes about small boys, his own children included, with affection and dignity. His wife, he admits, recently complained that while he had passed 40, he had passed it going in the wrong direction because he never played with anyone who was more than twelve years old. "All of which may have been quite true," says Bowen. "I mean, who else will have a catch with you?"
MOUNTAIN SPIRITS: A Chronicle of Corn Whiskey from King James' Ulster Plantation to America 's Appalachians and the Moonshine Life by JOSEPH EARL DABNEY 242 pages. Scribners. $8.95.
"Whiskey and freedom gang the-gither," declared Robert Burns—a poet and drinking man who turned out many a verse against Scotland's "Act of Excyse." Usquebaugh distillers in Scotland and Ulster generally felt the way Burns did. In the early 1700s most of them migrated to the American colonies, bringing their whisky-making tools and techniques with them. By 1750, moonshine was a necessity of life on the frontier, and brewing corn whisky was a major industry. From fusty books and firsthand interviews with oldtimers, with many facts and much affection, Joseph Dabney has put together a splendid and often hilarious history.