He attended New York University for all of his collegiate studies, earning a bachelor's degree there in 1934, a master's in 1936 and his Ph.D. in 1939 and was employed at NYU as an instructor.
Commerce and military ventures resulted in journeys to such remote locales as India with more specialized crafts designed that expanded the original flat-bottomed boats into vessels such as the trireme propelled by hundreds of oarsmen to speeds of seven knots by its 170 oars.
[4] Yale University Press published Casson's 2001 book Libraries in the Ancient World that uses references in ancient works and archeological evidence in the Middle East and the Greco-Roman world to follow the development of writing, the creation of the first books and the process of copying them by hand and assembling them into libraries.
[4] He documents the transitions from clay tablets, to papyrus and parchment scrolls, and the development of the codex as the precursor of the modern book.
Casson rejects the accepted wisdom that the Library of Alexandria was destroyed in 48 BC and argues that evidence shows that it continued in existence until 270 AD during the reign of Roman Emperor Aurelian.