He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies (1994), which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture."
After publishing several well-received books of collected essays on literature, Birkerts was appointed to many prominent editorial and teaching positions.
He became the Director of the Bennington College Writing Seminars, a position he assumed after the death of Liam Rector.
His father was noted architect Gunnar Birkerts, who based his practice in the Detroit area after immigrating to the United States following completion of his architectural degree in Stuttgart.
He was born and grew up in Latvia, leaving as a young man before the Soviet Army occupied the nation in the last days of World War II.