They say the grass is always greener on the other side, but for grass activists, things look pretty green right here and now. But look back at the heady days of the late 1970s teaches a lesson in how fragile political movements are, how quickly momentum can shift, and why it's important for activists to keep their hubris in check.

To be blunt, these are high times for cannabis campaigners. After years of slow expansion of support for medical marijuana, two states fully legalized recreational use in 2012, and so far the results look promising: plenty of tax revenue and none of the chaos naysayers predicted. Now more states are considering following in Washington and Colorado's footsteps. And most promising of all, popular support for legalization crossed 50 percent in the last couple of years and continues to grow:

Yet at the risk of inspiring paranoia, are advocates getting ahead of themselves? There's no doubt that the situation looks more hopeful for legalization than ever before. But an excellent new memoir by journalist Tony Dokoupil provides a sobering reminder of how quickly a moment can pass. Dokoupil's The Last Pirate is part personal and family narrative, part investigation, and part history of marijuana in America from around 1970 to 1985.

Starting as a low-level local dealer, the author's father, Anthony, moved up in the weed business until he was moving literally tons of Colombian bud into the U.S. Once, in the mid-1980s, "In a single load he supplied enough marijuana to levitate every college-age person in America and send them sideways to the store for snacks." (Anthony Dokoupil's story doesn't exactly have a happy end: Addicted to cocaine and estranged from his family, the law finally caught up with him—six days before the statute of limitations ran out.)