The author first reviews the major findings of career- criminal researchers during the last 20 years. He then compares the amounts of coverage devoted to career criminals in leading criminology journals and in 38 recent criminology textbooks. The data show that although leading journals give considerable coverage to career criminals, text authors say little about the research. The implications of these findings for criminology students are troubling for several reasons. First, although criminological research shows that career criminals are few in number, they commit street crimes at significant rates. If criminology textbook authors are serious about explaining to students why the United States has such a high rate of serious street crime, they must acknowledge and discuss career offenders. Second, by not pointing out chronicity and generality as the defining characteristics in some criminals' offending patterns, text authors may leave many students with the wrong impression: that even serious street offenders with multiple arrests commit few offenses and are crime specialists. The chapters on typologies of crime that dominate many textbooks almost inevitably risk inviting this misinterpretation: when authors classify and discuss offenders as either burglars, drug dealers, or robbers, they may fail to convey to students that some serious offenders are all three. To avoid this impression, text authors should integrate discussions of offender chronicity, especially offense generality, into chapters on typologies of crime. 3 tables and 79 references