Claremont, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/25/2014 -- Divvying up human beings into three groups: “teachers”, “social workers” and “missionaries”, author Mary Sisney explores how each of these groups would respond in certain situations in the prologue of her smart and funny new book, ‘The Bronze Rule’.

This examination is at the core of the book, which lampoons Bill Maher as being “an atheist missionary” and George Zimmerman as an “armed missionary”. No one is quite safe when Sisney is on the case, and as the author acknowledges, it is her crusade in life to convert people into “clear thinkers”.

In the book’s entertaining and often laugh-out-loud funny six chapters, Sisney shows how she lives her life and as she says, “minds her business”, allowing others to live theirs. In the epilogue, the author lists the Bronze Rules to live by, so that people can stop bothers others and live happily ever after, in the vein of fairytales of yore.

Thought-provoking, topical and intelligent, ‘The Bronze Rule’ is a straight-shot to the heart of extremists everywhere, and a wise and wry look at the way human beings relate to those around them.

Official Synopsis:

Are you a social worker, teacher, or missionary? Like comedian Bill Maher whom she calls an atheist missionary, Mary Sisney creates a new rule.

A companion to the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."), Sisney's Bronze Rule states: "If they are not bothering you, don't bother them. In other words, mind your business."

Teachers, who try to help people become smarter, better informed, clearer thinkers, and social workers, who try to help them become happier, healthier, and more self-sufficient, have less trouble minding their business than missionaries, who try to convert everyone to their way of thinking and living.

The Bronze Rule is a humorous book with serious messages. It ends with a list of both serious ("Smarten the Vote Rules") and comic ("Putting the 'Real' in Reality Rules") Bronze Rules for all of us to live by so that we can stop bothering each other and live happily ever after.

Mary Sisney used to be a teacher, but more than that – the author has spent forty-eight years as a dark-skinned black woman in white institutions. These experiences leave the author uniquely qualified to speak to the experiences of young black men and other minority groups who feel victimized or otherwise stigmatized in today’s society.

“While teaching, I encouraged my students to think past the obvious and look beneath the surface of things. In my tragicomic memoir, A Redlight Woman Who Knows How To Sing the Blues, named one of Kirkus Reviews Best Indie True Stories of 2013, I showed why and how I did that,” says Sisney. “This book continues that journey. I want my readers to know, for instance, that (like both Zimmerman and Martin), we all stereotype, read people based on the way they look. We need to recognize that we are doing that so that we can do it better.”

Continuing: “I feel I’m in a position to redefine normal and to explain why young black males are overrepresented in jail and underrepresented in the university.”

‘The Bronze Rule: How I Live My Life and Let Other People Live Theirs’ is available now: http://amzn.to/1gSibh9

About Mary Sisney
Retired English professor Mary Sisney is the author of A Redlight Woman Who Knows How to Sing the Blues, a tragicomic memoir named one of Kirkus Reviews Best True Stories of 2013. Her blog appears at https://www.goodreads.com