Ancient Ruins of America (1978)

Effervescent Los Angeles bishop Jack West narrates a slide show of his many travels throughout Central and South America for a fireside of Latter-day Saints. This slideshow led to a popular book on the subject and was a popular filmstrip displayed by many missionaries and members in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Many of Jack's claims of how ancient ruins and modern Native Americans relate to the narrative of the Book of Mormon are no longer held as valid by LDS scholars, but his assertions are still very much alive among popular LDS conceptions of Mesoamerican and Inca history and iconography.

This fireside was never officially published by BYU or ever officially backed by LDS leadership, but its influence among American Latter-day Saints' cultural understandings of the native peoples of Central and South America is undeniable.