Reece's 2006 book "Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness" (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006), with photos by John J. Cox and a foreword by Wendell Berry, chronicles the devastating effects of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia from October 2003 through November 2004. The book grew out of an essay for "Harper's Magazine" entitled "Death of a Mountain: Radical Strip Mining and the Leveling of Appalachia," which was published in the April 2005 edition and which would win the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.