Google has a “search-in-book” feature now which it appears to be testing. The feature is similar to Amazon.com, its A9.com search engine, and the commercial online library Questia. It seems to have a limited number of books but I found Louise Young’s Japan’s Total Empire. Just search for the book by title in the normal Google search engine and if a book turns up it you can enter the feature where you can see the book synopsis, back cover, reviews, table of contents, a few sample pages and access to a search engine which shows you all the pages which use a particular search term. You can then view each of these pages and those surrounding it. For Young’s book, search, for example for “Zhang Zuolin” to see all the pages in which she mentions my favorite bad boy warlord.