Thomas Stuart Ferguson is best known among Mormons as a popular fireside lecturer on Book of Mormon archaeology. As radio stations aired in the late 1980s and repeated a decade later:

In 1946, California lawyer Tom Ferguson rolled up his sleeves, threw a shovel over his shoulder, and marched into the remote jungles of southern Mexico. Armed with a quote by Joseph Smith that the Lord had “a hand in providing the Book of Mormon true in the eyes of all the people,” Ferguson’s goal was: Shut the mouths of the critics who said such evidence did not exist. Ferguson began an odyssey that included twenty-four trips to Central America, eventually resulting in a mountain of evidence supporting Book o Mormon claims.

Like a modern-day Heinrich Schliemann, who located the cities associated with Homer’s Iliad, Ferguson devoted his life to locating the actual cities mentioned in the Book of Mormon. But by the late 1970s, Ferguson had become convinced that the Mormon scripture was not based on real, historical events.

After the discovery of Ferguson’s office files, which document the adventurer's studies in the 1970s and 80s, archivist Stan Larson was able to piece together Ferguson’s own analysis of the archaeological evidence Ferguson himself gathered, first as a defender and then as a disbeliever in the literalness of the Book of Mormon narratives.

Stan Larson received his Ph.D. from from the University of Birmingham (England) and is the Curator of Manusripts at the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. He is the editor of two volumes of diaries by frontier LDS leader Rudger Clawson (Prisoner for Polygamy; A Ministry of Meetings), the missionary diaries of David O. McKay (What E'er Thou Art, Act Well Thy Part), a previously unpublished manuscript by frontier theologian B. H. Roberts (The Truth, The Way, The Life), a previously suppressed biography of LDS Apostle Henry D. Moyle (Working the Divine Miracle), and other documents he has similarly edited for publication. He has also published articles in BYU Studies, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Ensign, Journal of Mormon History, Sunstone, and elsewhere.