Here are the first and last paragraphs (citations omitted):
John Brown's body may lie moldering in the grave, but the militant abolitionist and his October 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry are alive and well in modern scholarship. Recent works have cast Brown as an idealistic revolutionary who fought for racial equality, albeit through controversial means. The historiography, however, overlooks the other participants in the Brown raid. Legal scholar Steven Lubet here expands our knowledge of the Brown cadre with a biography of the black raider John Anthony Copeland. Born free in North Carolina in 1834, Copeland moved as a child with his family to Oberlin, Ohio, and soon became a mainstay in the abolitionist community. He was inculcated in the "tenets of nonviolence" practiced by the antislavery citizens, only to undergo a conversion from "idealism to militancy" that culminated in the attack on Harpers Ferry. By shedding light on Copeland and his reformist background, Lubet aims to demonstrate that the Oberlin carpenter "played a key role in Brown's own planning for, and execution of, the historic raid". For Lubet, a man previously portrayed as a "loyal spear carrier" in the raid deserves "center stage" in the saga.
Despite the flaws in Lubet's book, however, it is an excellent work and a valuable contribution to the historiography of antislavery reform. In clear prose, Lubet makes a compelling argument for the centrality of Copeland to the Brown raid. Perhaps more vital is his depiction of Oberlin and the myriad links between the town and the affair at Harpers Ferry. Indeed, the fascinating connections between Oberlin and the raid, whether through Copeland, Johnson, or the Oberlin professor who sought to recover Copeland's body from proslavery medical students, offer an enriching understanding of the dynamics of antebellum reformist communities. Lubet has offered a novel take on the Brown raid with implications stretching beyond Harpers Ferry. His work thus comes highly recommended.
You can read the whole review, including the "flaws," here.