Hey Prac,
It's great to hear that you'll be using our Critical Reasoning book - when I first started reading it back in about 2003 it was the first test prep book to really convince me that there was a method to verbal questions, so I've long been a fan and was proud to be part of its evolution as we've updated it over the years.
The way that those books are laid out, Critical Reasoning 1 provides a lot of logical foundation and covers the majority of CR question types (Strengthen, Weaken, etc.). If you were only going to use one CR book for your studies, I'd recommend CR1 - it's the book that correlates most directly to most CR questions you'll see.
Critical Reasoning 2 covers "Advanced Application" question types, such as "Which best completes the passage?"; "Which of the following would be most useful in evaluating the conclusion?"; assumption-specific strategy, etc. It focuses on the hardest/most-unique 15% or so of CR questions; as a teacher, it's one of my favorite lessons because of the challenge level, so if you're expecting to score well into the 40s on verbal, it's a pretty good book to have access to to have seen the hardest CR questions out there.
I hope that helps, and I'd certainly love to hear from forum users who have used those books to get their thoughts, as well.
Cheers,
Brian
Brian Galvin
GMAT Instructor
Chief Academic Officer
Veritas Prep
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