Getting Ready for CP Violation in B decays

We review some recent results on b decays relevant to future CP violation studies. In particular, some new data on rare hadronic B decays will be presented, as well as inclusive searches for evidence for gluonic penguins and first hints of final state interaction phases in B decays to D* rho. The results discussed are based on data collected by the CLEO experiment including up to 5.8 x 10 ^6 B Bbar pairs.