Bose was born in Boston in 1959, but grew up in Calcutta, India, where she attended Modern High School for Girls.
[6] In her 2011 book, Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War, Bose claims that atrocities were committed by both sides in the 1971 Bangladesh War, but that memories of the atrocities had been "dominated by the narrative of the victorious side", pointing to Indian and Bangladeshi "myths" and "exaggerations" which were not historically or statistically plausible.
While the book does not exonerate the West Pakistani forces, it claims that the army officers "turned out to be fine men doing their best to fight an unconventional war within the conventions of warfare".
The book was criticized by Columbia University professor Naeem Mohaiemen in BBC[2] and Economic & Political Weekly[7] for ahistorical bias in sources.
She has also authored Money, Energy, and Welfare: the state and the household in India's rural electrification policy, published by Oxford University Press in 1993.