We have been hovering around 10% unemployment nationally for a while now. That's about double what we experienced prior to the housing bubble burst and banking nightmare. In many places, unemployment is more severe, such as Detroit, where unemployment is more than twice the national average. Yet the stock market has been rising as if this doesn't matter at all.

Perhaps on some level it actually doesn't matter. What if it actually makes things better?

A new year is upon us and like the beginnings of any year, and even more so, a decade, the predictions are flying fast and furious.

The start of 2010 is bringing out every analyst, talking head, business journalist, periodical and newsletter propagator, sportscaster, palm reader, taro card interpreter, astrologist, medium and madam making predictions to garner attention, entertain and even profit. Apologies to anyone I left out.

If you're a collector of rare and exotic investment books, you probably don't have a girlfriend, but may be happy to learn that Christopher Dennistoun's collection of 750 books on investments and financial speculation is up for sale at Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books in London. While the catalog is not yet on the website, the Financial Times discussed the collection.

With a focus on antiquarian books covering such events as the tulip mania of the 1630s, the stock-jobbers of London, and the speculation of the 1920s, I agree with Financial Times assessment. This collection will almost certainly be scooped up a hedge fund manager.

For those of us who can't afford the £375,000 ($750,000), here are two of my recommendations for learning a little something about the history of financial speculation. Both of these highly enjoyable books provide insight into the psychology of markets.

The Coffee Trader by David Liss is my favorite fictional financial book of all time. Set in 17th century Amsterdam, it follows the travails of Miguel Lienzo, a Portuguese commodities trader who makes an elaborate effort to recoup his wealth through an elaborate scheme to corner the coffee market.

Short History of Financial Euphoria by John Kenneth Galbraith is a slim volume that recounts all the big market manias and crashes from the 1600s through 1987.

To most people, even most investors the words "entertaining" and "derivatives" do not belong in the same sentence. Yet Satyajit Das' Traders, Guns, & Money is one the most entertaining investment books I've read in a long time, and is also on excellent primer on topics including derivatives, risk management, and Wall Street's inner workings. This will sound like hyperbole but it isn't: this is possibly the best insider account of a career in investments since Michael Lewis's book Liar's Poker came out in 1989.

Das is able to combine an informative introduction to the "dazzling world of derivatives" along with a jaded, cynical depiction of Wall Street greed. He discusses financial markets using a well-known quote from Donald Rumsfeld, and it is surprisingly effective: "There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Das uses this to discuss efforts to quantify risk, which he often describes as silly, and suggests that most professionals know it is too: "Risk management is like any religious text; nobody is willing to criticize it in public but few follow it completely in private." His stories about the sophomoric antics among young traders are entertaining, and may discourage some young people from pursuing a career on Wall Street (or encourage it in some cases).

In all, I can't recommend this book strongly enough. Risk management and derivatives are fields that all investors should have some knowledge of because they are such a large part of financial markets today. Traders, Guns, & Money is a great way to learn about them.

On a side note, Warren Zevon's song Lawyers, Guns, and Money (I assume the title of this book is a take-off on it) is a classic and should be on the iPod of every investor.