January not only ushered in a new presidential administration, it also saw the publication of a new book, “It Takes Chutzpah,” by Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, who is currently the fourth-most senior member in the U.S. Senate.

This book offers an interesting counterpoint to headlines that are currently dominating the national news.

As the son of Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, Wyden embraces the chutzpah — a can-do attitude for confronting tough situations — of his heritage, along with Judaism’s concept of tikkun olam, a commitment to improving the welfare of society at large.

While Wyden is known for his progressive politics in terms of health care reform, the environment and the internet, he’s also been around long enough to be a firm believer in reaching across the aisle to craft bipartisan legislative solutions.

This week’s book

This week’s book

“It Takes Chutzpah” by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden

Grand Central Publishing — 336 pp — $30

So “It Takes Chutzpah” is Wyden’s invitation to all Americans to defy lock-step political stances, navigate adversity, and imagine ways to work together toward common goals.

Granted, it won’t be easy. Wyden puts forward “Ron’s 12 Rules of Chutzpah” as the way to accomplish this.

Rule No. 1 is: “If you want to make change, you’ve got to make noise.” But that doesn’t mean you can just be a loudmouth.

“In our complex, cacophonous culture,” Wyden counsels, “important goals, especially civic goals, are impossible to achieve without some combination of vision, ideas, partners, (and) processes … ”

For this, and for each of the succeeding rules he puts forward, the Senator flags the lessons he’s learned along the way as he writes about his long career in politics, beginning in 1971 when he served as a driver for then-Oregon Sen. Wayne Morse.

A few years later, Wyden found himself working with a group of self-proclaimed “wrinkled radicals” and helped to establish a Gray Panthers chapter in Oregon.

Thanks to his advocacy on their behalf, Wyden’s senior friends urged him to run for Congress, and in 1980, he was elected to represent Oregon’s Third Congressional District. He was re-elected seven times, then in 1996 he ran for the U.S. Senate in a special election to fill the seat vacated by Bob Packwood.

The Republican opponent Wyden defeated then, Gordon Smith, ran for Senate again when Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield retired, and won. Although belonging to opposite parties, Wyden and Smith ended up becoming good friends. Holding joint town hall meetings around the state, they became known as “The Oregon Odd Couple.” Wyden says now that Smith “is in my personal pantheon of Mormon mensches” — high praise, indeed.

Wyden counts many other Republicans in the Senate, past and present, as allies in some of the bipartisan bills he has worked on, including Sens. Olympia Snowe, Orrin Hatch, Lisa Murkowski and Chuck Grassley. As his Rule No. 10 states, “Work with anybody who is serious about moving forward.”

Wyden’s willingness to listen to new ideas and incorporate them “into a whole that’s better than the sum of its parts” (that’s Rule No. 11) is a message we might encourage all of our electeds to heed.