If you have been looking for an antidote to Black Lives Matter, Heather Mac Donald’s new book published today, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe, is the prescription.

Ms. Mac Donald is the most effective, articulate, and knowledgeable writer today on issues of law enforcement and criminal justice.  In this book, she has brought together a powerful refutation of the left’s efforts – led by the Obama administration – to undo the considerable progress in reducing crime America has made since Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York and modeled a new paradigm of law enforcement.

The book is divided into four major parts.  The first and longest is devoted to “Burning Cities and the Ferguson Effect,” tracing the events in Ferguson, Missouri that led to Black Lives Matter and the Obama administration’s efforts to pillory local law enforcement as racist when disproportionate numbers of blacks get into trouble.  Ferguson became the touchstone for a broader attack on cops, and Mac Donald develops the story with great insight and detail.  The “Ferguson Effect,” as most readers know, is the rebound in crime rates that has resulted from the left’s attacks on cops in the wake of Ferguson.

I followed the Ferguson riots and aftermath closely, but I learned a lot from this book about what was really happening and what was done with events there by those with political agendas.  The level of detail in this account is stunning, with Mac Donald explaining and refuting the arguments of the left and BLM.

The second section of the book, “Handcuffing the Cops,” logically follows and shows what is being done to frustrate the effective measures that have reduced our crime rates.  Mac Donald calls these efforts “de-policing,” in particular the war on “stop-and-frisk” policies whereby police go after gun-carrying people to get them off the streets before they wreak mayhem.

Part three, “The Truth about Crime,” focuses on the real root of the core offenders who cause most of the street crime in our cities: the collapse of two-parent families.  A significant focus here is on Chicago, and President Obama’s record there, from the time he was a “community organizer” to the present, virtually ignoring the problem while decrying other factors (racism, poverty).

The final part, “Incarceration and its Critics,” focuses on the campaign against “mass incarceration,” yet another race-infused movement that aims at returning more effenders to the streets to commit more crime.

Ms. Mac Donald writes in a tone I can describe only as cold fire – intense but not hyperbolic, armed with facts and irrefutable logic.  The moment for this book is now, with a presidential election looming that will set the course for the next four years and beyond, and with the prospect of a rapidly rising crime rate devastating our cities should BLM and others succeed in placing allies in positions of power.

If you face the prospect of talking with friends or relatives about crime and want to be able to explain to them why the attacks on cops and the justice system will do incredible harm to life in our cities, this book will give you excatly what you need.