Leo Melamed: Escape to the Futures

This is the memoir of Leo Melamed, who fled the Nazis in Lithuania on the Trans-Siberian Railway at the age of eight and rose to become one of the most powerful financial consultants in the United States. As a law student in 1953 he answered an ad for Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane thinking it was a law firm. Soon though, he became fascinated by commodities trading and by age 37 he was chairman of the Mercantile Exchange. With Reuters, he created Globex, a computer-based trading system to buy and sell futures around the world and currently assists such high profile clients as Hillary Rodham Clinton. As Mr. Melamed writes, "(I've) come a long way."