The city of Portland might look very different today, if not for the decisions of city fathers over the last few hundred years. That's one of the themes of a new book by St. Joseph's College history professor Michael C. Connolly. The book, called "Seated by the Sea: The Maritime History of Portland Maine and its Irish Longshoremen," looks specifically at the mid-19th to mid-20th century, and, as the title suggests, at the working-class immigrant families that helped to shape the city's identity.

Michael Connolly's grandfather, as it happens, was a charter member of the longshoreman's union in Portland, and as an historian, Connolly felt it was time to chronicle the lives of the thousands of Irish immigrants who worked the waterfront, and set up new lives on the coast of Maine.

The launch of Connolly's book is scheduled for this Thursday at 7:00 p.m. at the Maine Historical Society on Congress Street in Portland.