Out-of-the-box, there's no "show unread emails" option in GMail or GoogleMail as you get in say Outlook. Fortunately, in addition to your own user defined labels, there's also some system labels that are not displayed in your list of labels in the left hand navigation. One of these labels enables you to view unread e-mails. To view all (and only) unread messages in your Gmail or GoogleMail account type "label:unread" (or "l:unread") (not including the quotation marks) in the Gmail search field then click on "Search Mail". You can also combine these with other criteria, such as "label:unread from:ben".