NationsBank became one of the nation's leading financial powers following its 1988 entry into Texas with the acquisition of the former First Republic banks and its 1991 merger with C&S/Sovran of Atlanta and Norfolk. NationsBank now has nearly $120 billion in assets and is the leading bank in a region stretching from Maryland to southern Florida and western Texas. Howard Covington and Marion Ellis provide a fascinating account of this nontraditional financial institution that is now the fourth-largest bank in the country.

Since its formation in 1960 as a result of the merger of two North Carolina banks, the company has surprised analysts and competitors alike with its aggressive and innovative approach to management and banking. The company's success is grounded, Covington and Ellis explain, in a leadership style set by its first chief executive officer, Addison Reese, and continued by his successors, Thomas I. Storrs and Hugh McColl, Jr., the current CEO. This succession of competitive leaders has created a corporate culture that makes NationsBank unique and has prepared it to become one of the country's first nationwide banks. The Story of NationsBank is therefore not only a history of a highly successful business but also a study of the transformation of the American banking system. Covington and Ellis show that NationsBank is representative of a new breed of bank whose leaders are less concerned with convention and more concerned with competition and changing the rules of the U.S. banking industry.