Many professors and graduate students finishing their Ph.D.'s at the University of California at Berkeley scoffed at the idea of a post at a liberal-arts college. To them it was considered an acceptable choice only if none of the jobs at research universities came through. Liberal-arts colleges were viewed merely as teaching institutions and did not have the resources to support serious scholarship. But the author's experience, and that of many of her colleagues in the humanities and social sciences, is that the best liberal-arts institutions are, in fact, more conducive to junior-faculty research than some of their Research I counterparts. In her own case, as a result of a low teaching load, generous internal grants, and two years of junior leave to take advantage of external fellowships, she was able to do the research and writing for a second book and several peer-reviewed journal articles. She successfully came up for tenure in her sixth year. Her publication record should be a testament to the support that top liberal-arts colleges give to junior professors. But for serious scholars committed to living in the world of ideas, the ability to carve out of one's professional obligations enough time for reading, thinking, and writing should be the true measure of whether an institution is conducive to research--and not simply whether it is called a "research" institution.