Inspired by fellow Swiss Tuggener's book, Bill Brandt's "The English at Home" (1936), and Walker Evans "American Photographs" (1938), and on the recommendation of Evans (a previous recipient), Alexey Brodovitch, Alexander Liberman, Edward Steichen, and Meyer Schapiro, Frank secured a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1955 to travel across the United States and photograph all strata of its society. He took his family along with him for part of his series of road trips over the next two years, during which time he took 28,000 shots. Only 83 of those were finally selected by him for publication in "The Americans".