An upbeat episode on historical revisionism.

When I read* Ron Chernow's Grant biography, I didn't expect to learn anything about my ancestors living at the time, mainly because they weren't living in the U.S. But I was wrong-- President Grant did his best to help Romanian Jews. It's possible that if the changes his Consul General Benjamin Franklin Peixotto strove to enact had truly taken hold, my family would not have ended up coming to New York. Learning about this bit of history is a reminder that progress is not linear. 

*listened to the audiobook of

More info on Peixotto: 

• http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11993-peixotto#anchor1
• https://ro.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/policy-history/io/

Amazing theme music: Romanian Hora by The Underscore Orkestra is licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.