bracket,came on board ,in-house

what are the meanings of bracket, came on board, in-house in this article?

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All books are written over a span of time—that interval between conception in the author’s mind and birth in print. And just as an embryo in a mother’s womb is affected by what happens out the womb, a book in process is necessarily affected by events that make an impression on the writer during gestation. To that degree, even a book about the future is inescapably a product of its own slice of history.

The “slice” it took to write this book was the twelve years bracketing the arrival of the twenty-first century, and no reasonably alert person interested in the world could have escaped the dramatic headlines during the period.
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The twelve years it took to write this book would have been even longer if chance hadn’t made Steve Christensen available to help speed things up. I asked Steve, at one point, if he could recommend a good editor to assist us as we finished the book. To my delight, he recommended himself. An experienced journalist, formerly Western Division editor for United Press international, then one of world’s main news agencies, and later editor and general manager of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. Steve came on board three years ago. He proved to be a first-class in-house editor. More important, he brought with him discipline, brains, warmth, good nature and a delightful, sardonic sense of humor. It made finishing this book a pleasure. In the process, it made a friendship.