In 2009, Reece published "An American Gospel: On Family, History, and The Kingdom of God" (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), a book about Reece's upbringing as the son and grandson of Baptist preachers, his father's suicide, and his own subsequent struggle to find a form of Christianity with which he would feel comfortable—and the guidance he received from the writings of Thomas Jefferson, Walt Whitman and other American geniuses. This book, too, grew out of an essay for "Harper's Magazine", "Jesus Without the Miracles: Thomas Jefferson's Bible and the Gospel of Thomas".