Inspired by fellow Swiss Tuggener's book, Bill Brandt's The English at Home (1936),[4] and Walker Evans' American Photographs[5] (1938),[6] and on the recommendation of Evans (a previous recipient),[7] Alexey Brodovitch, Alexander Liberman, Edward Steichen, and Meyer Schapiro,[8] Frank secured a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation[9] in 1955 to travel across the United States and photograph all strata of its society.

"[citation needed] Shortly after returning to New York in 1957, Frank met Beat writer Jack Kerouac on the sidewalk outside a party and showed him the photographs from his travels.

Popular Photography, for one, derided Frank's images as "meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons and general sloppiness.

"[citation needed] This stands in contrast to Walker Evans' American Photographs, a direct inspiration to Frank, with its rigidly framed images shot via large-format viewcamera.

Frank presents photographs made in scattered places around the country, returning again and again to such themes as the flag, the automobile, race, restaurants—eventually turning those artifacts, by the weight of the associations in which he embeds them, into profound and meaningful symbols of American culture.

Writings by Simone de Beauvoir, Erskine Caldwell, William Faulkner, Henry Miller and John Steinbeck were included, that Delpire positioned opposite Frank's photographs.

In 1959, The Americans was finally published in the United States by Grove Press, with the text removed from the French edition due to concerns that it was too un-American in tone.

[citation needed] The added introduction by Kerouac, along with simple captions for the photos, were now the only text in the book, which was intended to mirror the layout of Walker Evans' American Photographs.