Leo melamed epitomizes the American dream.

He arrived in America when he was only 9 years old, his family having fled Poland and Hitler's Gestapo by running three-quarters of the way around the world, including two weeks on the Trans-Siberian railroad. He ended up as a kid immigrant on Chicago's north side, where, in law school, he answered a want ad at Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Bean, which he thought was a local law firm. Of course, it was a commodities brokerage at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), where Melamed worked, joined, and eventually became chairman in the late 1960s.

Melamed's inspiring life story has been covered in previous works. His new book, "For Crying Out Loud: From Open Outcry to the Electronic Screen," focuses on the dramatic transformation of trading that occurred during the 10-year period spanning 1996 to 2006, when, by and large, the modern futures exchange was born.

Now Chairman Emeritus of the exchange, Melamed played a major part in that transformation. Back in 1982, for example, when trading in stock index futures like the Standard & Poor's 500 index was virtually nonexistent, Melamed -- as chairman -- stood in the pit to encourage other traders to provide liquidity. Yet he understood that, in order to compete, one must adapt and grow. In the markets, that meant embracing computer technology over the long-established method of "open-outcry" pit trading.

So even as others, such as the New York Mercantile Exchange (now a subsidiary of CME), were appeasing their short-sighted members by promising to maintain the dominance of floor trading, Melamed and the Merc pushed Globex, its revolutionary electronic trading platform. He had been advocating for the development of electronic trading as early as 1987 and, under his leadership, the exchange aggressively adopted the technology that would open up the S&P 500 futures pit to a global audience literally around the clock.

I was on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Sept. 9, 1997, the day the E-Mini S&P 500 contract was launched, ushering in a landmark breakthrough for trading world-wide. Eight thousand contracts traded the first day, the highest number of opening-day trades in the history of futures trading. It became an instant success and immediately catapulted the CME as the undisputed leader in the derivatives market, a position it holds to this day.

Chicago's Big Behemoth

Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) - 6 years

The popularity isn't hard to explain. Up until that point, to trade in the futures markets you had to call a broker, who would then call the exchange and relay the order, which would be written down, passed into the trading pit and executed. The outsider was at a distinct disadvantage to the floor trader.

Now, the outside investor was the floor trader. And while the '70s-era generation of futures traders had been standing in pits, those that followed had been playing Pac-Man, immediately comfortable with the concept of trading on a screen. Even as a thinly-capitalized college kid, my tiny bids and offers, made from a laptop from my suburban Chicago apartment, were suddenly on equal footing with those from the world's biggest multinational investment banks.

Particularly enjoyable are the colorful trading stories from Melamed's many decades at the exchange, such as the night of the 1987 stock market crash when one of the exchange's largest players had an immense margin call, and Melamed himself was forced to call the firm's chief executive to demand payment. "We are the Chicago Mercantile Exchange," Melamed recalls saying on that 2 a.m. call. "And you owe us a billion dollars."

Like the late economist Milton Friedman whom Melamed had drafted into helping him create the first futures contracts on foreign exchange, Melamed is a fervent capitalist and spends pages describing how, like many college students, he began to understand the uniquely American value of individualism, as opposed to his parent's socialist European perspective.

That philosophy was apparent in his work at every turn. Early advertisements for the exchange featured a photograph of a beefy pig with the sassy caption, "Capitalist Pig," and I was told for years that Melamed kept one of my firm's promotional T-shirts on the wall of his brokerage. In that vein, the book also offers a scathing critique of recent bailouts and interventions. "The free market model cannot function when it is directed or, better still, misdirected by the heavy hand of government edict," he writes.

In an industry full of colorful characters and inspiring stories, Leo Melamed stands out. His latest book is a satisfying read for traders, innovators or young minds in search of their own American dream.