The most sure-fire way to fund a creative career is family money. So says Mason Currey in his new book *Making Art and Making a Living: Adventures in Funding a Creative Life*—and only a whiny nepo baby could possibly disagree.

And yet, the history of art is no mere “history of rich kids.” Only egomaniacs get into art expecting sure-fire success. But more than that, I find it is often the people who most need the world to be different than it is who wind up the most creative, who need to shape what they have into something else. Stories of trials and triumphs punctuate Currey’s book, which is no how-to. Instead, it’s a trove of idiosyncratic, colorful stories—those titular adventures—that exemplify the many resourceful and creative ways artists have made it work.

Even in the first section on the fortunate, paths to family money are not always straightforward but rely on twists of fate.…