A couple of weeks ago, Ken Gormley received a call from someone who identified himself as a member of Baylor University’s presidential search committee.

The committee was considering hiring Ken Starr as Baylor’s next president, the caller told Gormley.

Did Gormley have any opinion about Starr, the caller asked.

For the last 10 years, Gormley, interim dean at Duquesne University law school in Pittsburgh, has been researching Starr and his role in the investigation that led to the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton.

What emerged from that decade of research is a gripping, nearly 800-page book detailing our country’s last political crisis of the 20th century.

Not only did Gormley have an opinion about Starr, it was an opinion based on hundreds of hours of interviews with virtually every major player involved in this scandal — including Starr and Clinton.

“I have the greatest respect for Ken Starr,” the author told me during a phone interview last week, the day after Baylor announced that Starr would become its 14th president.

It also happened to be the day that Gormley’s book, “The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr,” went on sale.

“My criticisms of Ken Starr, like any of my criticisms of Bill Clinton, have to do with the question of, was it a good thing for America?” Gormley said of the entire episode.

As he makes clear in his book, written from a neutral but highly passionate perspective, the whole sordid affair was a train wreck for Clinton, for Starr and, most important, for the country.

“I believe this whole moment in history was the beginning of a division in the country that hasn’t corrected itself yet,” Gormley said. “It was the beginning of red state versus blue state.

“The message I hope to impart with this book is that both sides were responsible for the train wreck that occurred here.”

Far from being the country’s foil — as some would assert — or the country’s hero — as others would have it — Starr is a highly talented, highly principled man who was put on the path of this train wreck by the American people and the American political system, Gormley said.

The irony is that the very attributes that made Starr such a desirable candidate for Baylor’s presidency are attributes that he shares with Clinton.

“I just found it uncanny,” Gormley said of the two men’s similarities. “They share more similarities than differences, certainly more than either would like to acknowledge.”

He said that both men were at the top of their games when they crossed paths with one another.

“They’re both incredibly smart people with great people skills. . . .They came from no financial means at all. They are two completely self-made men.”

Gormley demonstrates this with clarity in his book. And we should take comfort in the fact that these two men have more in common than they have differences.

That’s because the same holds true for most of this community.

Most of us had very visceral reactions when we first learned of Baylor’s decision to hire Starr — good and bad.

I would suggest that before we allow these reactions to color our opinion of Starr — and especially of one another — we take time to read this engrossing book and try to understand what happened.

Gormley weaves a narrative that masterfully analyzes both the political and the legal strategies that played out before the country — and he adds insight that none of us were privy to at the time.

Gormley ably demonstrates in his narrative that the stakes between the Clinton and Starr battle were enormously high.

As Gormley so aptly reminded me: While we as a country were fighting among ourselves, forces outside our country were conspiring to attack us.

What is less obvious are the stakes for this community. Baylor’s success is enormously important for all of us.

Now, Baylor’s success is inextricably linked with the success of Ken Starr.

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