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THE RIGHT LINE OF CERDIC, by Alfred Duggan (302 pp.; Pantheon; $3.95). Alfred the Great, the strategist who let the peasant woman's cakes burn, is the latest hero to receive the full Duggan treatment. Historical Novelist Duggan pays his respects to legend, but he is more concerned with the larger issues behind King Alfred's precarious defense of 9th century Wessex against the pagan Danes. Alfred never crushed them. But he repeatedly checked and harried them until more and more Danes turned from unprofitable raiding to settle on the land, and from their war gods to the gentle Christ. Alfred's message, and presumably its relevance for today, is that there are more ways to win than in one bang-up battle.

JAPANESE SHORT STORIES, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (224 pp.; Liveright; $4.95). Akutagawa, who committed suicide in 1927, is still considered the most Occidental, as well as one of the most influential, Japanese writers. His famed Rashomon was made into an unforgettable movie and later a Broadway play. In this new collection of ten stories, he is badly served by Translator Takashi Kojima, who has used almost every cliche in the English language. But even so, Akutagawa's combination of savagery and detachment can raise Western hackles and dampen Western brows.

ONE-LEG, by the Marquess of Anglesey (428 pp; Morrow; $7.50). A debonair portrait of one of the great 19th century soldier-aristocrats by his admiring great-great-grandson, the present marquess. Henry William Paget, Lord Anglesey, spent 20 years in the House of Commons without making a single speech. He had much more to say to the ladies, among them the beautiful Duchess of Rutland, a widow twelve years his senior. Annoyed one night that he was separated from the duchess, Paget set fire to some gunpowder in the house where she was sleeping. In the tumult that followed, he managed to whisk her off to a nearby hayloft. The war with Napoleon was just what Paget's exuberant spirits needed, and he whipped the British cavalry into a crack fighting force. He was watching his men smash the French at Waterloo, standing next to the Duke of Wellington, when he was hit. "By God, sir, I've lost my leg," he exclaimed, according to legend. Wellington lowered his telescope and replied, "By God, sir, so you have," and screwed the telescope back to his eye.

CARL SANDBURG, by Harry Golden (287 pp.; World; $5). Harry (Only in America) Golden has put together an undefinitive biography of his old friend the poet out of snips and snatches from Sandburg's autobiography, newspaper columns, poetry and memorabilia. But there are some nuggets in this worked-over lode. Item: Sandburg was briefly considered by important Republicans as a dark-horse Republican candidate for the presidency in 1940 (Willkie was nominated, and the relieved Sandburg stumped the country for Roosevelt). Item: Poet-Patriarchs Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg are barely on speaking terms. Item : one of Sandburg's most widely quoted statements was put in his mouth by an imaginative Moline, Ill., newspaperwoman, who asked him, "Would you say that slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work?" "Yes," said Sandburg.

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