This book analyzes two pieces by American composer George Crumb (1929-2022) as artifacts of American collective memory of war. *Black Angels* (1970) has long been associated with the Vietnam War, even though its relationship to the war specifically has changed over time. *Winds of Destiny* (2004) is specifically about the Civil War and shows how Americans interpret other wars through this nineteenth-century conflict, and that its central tensions of race and power are still political issues Americans have yet to reckon with.