The British-Italian architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers (1909–1969) made key contributions to expanding the appreciation of the modern movement in postwar Italy and beyond. Rogers challenged the break from history espoused by his contemporaries, for whom the modern movement was an epic phenomenon divorced from the past and exempt from criticism. He was well-known for his pivotal role within the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM), his collaborative practice with Milan-based BBPR (established 1932), and his parallel careers in teaching and writing. Yet, despite these public roles and his influence on prominent figures such as Aldo Rossi and Robert Venturi, Rogers remains relatively unrecognised in the historiography of twentieth-century architecture. To remedy this oversight, The Hero of Doubt makes a curated collection of Rogers's writings available to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Newly translated from Italian, with an introduction by Roberta Marcaccio and a critical essay by Joan Ockman, the texts in this volume cover a period of 33 years. They span from Rogers's initial adherence to fascism and his subsequent struggle as a Jewish intellectual after the proclamation of the Racial Purity Laws, to his postwar reflections on reconstruction and the architect’s role within society.

Roberta Marcaccio is an editor, a research, and communication consultant and an educator whose work focuses on alternative forms of design practice and pedagogy. Her publications on the topic include the forthcoming Spaces for Solastalgia, The Hero of Doubt (MIT Press, 2025); Architecture’s Afterlife (Routledge, 2024); Architects After Architecture (Routledge, 2020), and The Business of Research (Wiley, 2019). Marcaccio is a Graham Foundation grantee and has been awarded a Built Environment Research Fellowship by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 as well as a Research Publication Fellowship by the Architectural Association School of Architecture.