FOR THE DEFENSE (624 pp.) Lloyd Paul StrykerDoubleday ($5).
When a professionally partisan trial lawyer such as Manhattan's Lloyd Paul Stryker turns biographer, he also turns defense counsel. His Andrew Johnson was a passionate defense of Lincoln's maligned successor in which spleen ran as deep as fact. Now in For the Defense he still writes like a lawyer on retainer, but his defense is framed in frank hero worship. The hero: Thomas Erskine, great 18th Century English barrister and Whig Lord Chancellor of England in the reign of George III.
Thomas Erskine, son of the Scottish 10th Earl of Buchan, is...