Slowrotor, composites absorb a lot of energy because they fail after reaching high stresses. Look at all those F1 crashes. Steel is good, as long as you don't let it locally buckle. Aluminium is suprisingly forgiving since it is very ductile, so stiff sections will generally yield before they buckle. Normally a structure that crashes well is also good in fatigue, particularly if the loads are going in the same direction (there are always exceptions by local fatigue cracking).
A lot of powered aircraft don't spin recover well, mostly due to high Z-axis rotational inertia (ie masses like engines at the extremes). Any roll soon becomes yaw so the spin can flatten after a few turns, obviously natural pitch down helps to unstall the wings. Gliders are quite different: It used to amaze me that a K8 (wood) would recover just by relaxing the backpressure. A K21 (composite) would just go into a mushing turn. Not really flown properly for some years now though.
Agreed about old school, Um...lifting - just wish i had the money/time to enjoy it.
Mart