[2] Over the next forty years, the company became the leader in the Americana market, with the best items and the best collections passing through Reese's hands.

[2] Reese also worked closely with Yale's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library to shape their Americana collections.

[4] In 1998, the William Reese Company began offering Fellowships in the Print Culture of the Americas, to fund research in American book history.

Reese was widely regarded as "the greatest American antiquarian bookseller of his generation, highly respected for his extensive knowledge of Americana, exploration, natural history, color plate books, and literature.

"[7] Reese was profiled in the 2019 documentary The Booksellers, directed by D.W. Young[8] and memorialized in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America.