Her first book, The Land of Naked People: Encounters with Stone Age Islanders (Houghton Mifflin, 2003) describes the experiences of hunter-gatherers on the Andaman Islands as they come in contact with civilization. It was completed with the help of a Guggenheim fellowship. Her second book, Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II(Basic Books, 2010) is an economic and political history of India during the war and details the British prime minister's culpability in the Bengal famine of 1943. Madhusree has served on the board of editors of Scientific American magazine and has a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago. She has written on climate change, the Bhopal gas disaster, the ethics of animal experimentation, and diverse other issues involving science and society.