Tomorrow's Gold, by Marc Faber

For beginning investors, this is a great second book (after reading Peter Lynch).

As I recall, Faber does a good job discussing the history of markets, including mention of the Austrian bust in the 1870's (one of my favorite examples of a boom/bust). He details the stages of an emerging market and how to identify them. He discusses more recent booms/busts in Russia and Argentina, for example. Faber has a lifetime of experience investing in emerging markets. The information in this book is invaluable to someone starting out in the bullish US equities and real estate environment these days. Learn from history and the mistakes of others so you can live through a boom/bust cycle without going bankrupt.