Is there some place to adjust preferences for unity other than CCSM?
For instance my mounted volumes don't show up in unity. I am guessing I can turn this on somewhere.
Also I am guessing there is a way to add a custom launcher to Unity that is totally obvious but somehow is escaping me.
Is there an actual manual for Unity?
There is no actual manual for Unity yet but Tips & Tricks for Unity is a good place to start.
Also as Jorge said most of these questions have been asked and answered before here so do a search for Unity and you should get the info you need.
There is simple-ccsm too. The volumes showing on the desktop is nothing to do with compiz. You control that in gconf-editor. This will point you to the item to enable: http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2007/10/25/hide-partition-icons-from-your-ubuntu-desktop/
You can still use gconf-edit to make some changes. It was the only place I could find to remove text from the icon bars. It appears that Gnome is still in there somewhere. There is also a beta version of Ubuntu Tweak just for Natty you may also be interested in.