Brendan McNulty’s work on “The Meanest Man in Congress,” a biography of congressional giant Jack Brooks, started with research but ended with a full-scale commitment to a decade-long project that required it.

McNulty joined his father, former White House correspondent Timothy McNulty, a couple of years into the book’s creation, launched in 2009. Father and son shared research and writing duties and will share a table in Port Arthur for a book signing at the Museum of the Gulf Coast, 700 Procter St., from 5-7 p.m. Thursday.

The younger McNulty said the pair were interested in the project “as soon as we found out there was an appetite among Jack Brooks’ former constituents, friends and colleagues to have his story written down,” he said Monday.

“I got engrossed in the story,” he said, “because everything this congressman filed had impact on everyday lives.”

Brooks, who represented Southeast Texas for 42 years in the nation’s capital, was by the book’s account a worker, someone who hammered out legislation that mattered and did the grueling work of forming coalitions to get bills passed into law. His methodical work was done with full knowledge of the rules and oftentimes in committees or behind the scenes. For many years, Brendan McNulty said, Brooks labored almost anonymously to most of the world, working his way up in Congress through the committee system.

Part of Brooks’ success rested in his friendships formed under the guidance of former House Speaker Sam Rayburn, 43^rd speaker of the House and a fellow Texan who mentored Democrats like President Lyndon Johnson and future House speakers like Carl Albert, D-Oklahoma, and Tip O’Neill, D-Massachusetts.

Part of his success was created during tough Marine service in World War II, where Brendan McNulty said Marine service taught Brooks about how to operate within a system and how to exact total accountability from those under him. It also showed his determination to work with his men and to “get his hands dirty” during the Marines’ long, difficult campaign in the Pacific Ocean.

He said Brooks knew, too, how to work with Republicans, to shape legislation to make it most palatable to enough people to effect real change. He was “amicable” with both former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, a WWII veteran and Republican who was elected first to the House and later the Senate; and Frank Horton, a native Texan and WWII veteran and a Republican who was elected to Congress from New York, and with whom he worked closely on legislation.

Brooks’ story “had to be told,” McNulty said, because he was a “legislative genius” who got things done and made a major impact on the country while working through 10 presidential administrations. That story runs counter to current politics, where cooperation across political divides is rare, as is impactful legislation.

“The Meanest Man in Congress” was published by NewSouth Books in Montgomery, Alabama.