I wish I could read Wikipedia like this

Similar, but apparently "one-way": http://www.telescopictext.com/

This already exists on Wikipedia.

Under preferences, select the Gadgets tab and enable "Navigation popups".

When hovering over a link in a Wikipedia article, a small popup will appear, in addition to some metadata about the link, the first paragraph of the article will appear, including links that may appear in that paragraph, which can also be hovered to make another popup appear.

I like it a lot, my use of wikipedia often leads to a bunch of opened tabs and a lack of focus on what I was looking for in the first place (which might also be a great thing depending on your mood).

This reminds me of Apture, which Google acquired in 2011.