A lot of the authorities say you can't cram last minute for a show like this. Nonsense. I think. You may or may not significantly increase your knowledge base. (For example, I'm embarassingly ignorant of Shakespeare) But you'll feel a whole lot better. I immediately ordered 3 books from the web. I'd heartily recommend all three. They were:
Secrets of the Jeopardy Champions by Chuck Forrest and M. Lowenthal
How to Get on Jeopardy!... and Win: Valuable Information from a Champion by Michael Dupee
The Cultural Literacy Trivia Guide by Steven Ferrill et al.
I thought all 3 books were tremendously helpful. The two books written by 3 Jeopardy! legends were really helpful in making me feel more comfortable with everything that was going on, and pointing out what fields come up the most often, which helped me prioritized what to study. The other one was chock full of helpful information in a format that seems to be designed for someone who's prepping to go on a show like this. The only problem with that is that sometimes it's wrong.
I studied world capitals out of an almanac. I watched a LOT of TV. I rented DVDs of Shakespeare plays. I paid closer attention when I read the paper. I read parts of the paper that weren't the funnies. I searched the web under "jeopardy contestant" and "jeopardy experience" and read every article I found.
No one escaped being forced to quiz me on things - the weird thing was that it was fun for me. That's kind of scary.
Getting there