Over the years of his editorship, he drew attention to two generations of American authors, from Sherwood Anderson and Edna Ferber to Richard Wright and Irwin Shaw.

After his death, for instance, The New Yorker compared him to the recently deceased editor of the Social Register, suggesting that they shared a form of snobbery.

O'Brien, who had once called Story one of the most important events in literary history since the publication of Lyrical Ballads, presumably would have approved the choice.

These years witnessed both the ascendancy and eclipse of the type of short story favored by O'Brien: writers as diverse as John Cheever, Bernard Malamud, Joyce Carol Oates, and Tillie Olsen offered sharply observed, generally realistic stories that eschewed trite conventions.

Foley also attended to the rise of so-called minority literature, dedicating the 1975 volume to Leslie Marmon Silko, although it has been argued that the series was less perceptive in this area than it might have been.

Under the guidance of a series editor (Shannon Ravenel 1978–1990, Katrina Kenison 1991–2006, Heidi Pitlor 2007– ), a different writer of reputation would select the contents and introduce the volume each year.

In 2015, Lorrie Moore served as the guest editor for a centennial anthology from the series, 100 Years of The Best American Short Stories.

As critic Richard Eder wrote in The New York Times in 1999, "Instead of a strictly contemporary judgment we have a running one: These were the stories that judges in the 1930's, 40's and 50's chose.