There was no book with everyone's phone number in it. There were many books that covered small regions. If you lived in Oshkosh Wisconsin and wanted the number for someone in Kansas City, or even Madison Wisconsin it wasn't that easy to get that book. Maybe your library had it. Phone numbers on paper aren't that useful. You can't robodial a paper phone book without hiring actual people. But no matter what you couldn't get millions of phone numbers while sitting on your couch, and if you could they would be useless because they were all on paper.