This intuitive yet rigorous introduction derives the core results of digital communication from first principles. Theory, rather than industry standards, motivates the engineering approaches, and key results are stated with all the required assumptions. The book emphasizes the geometric view, opening with the inner product, the matched filter for its computation, Parseval's theorem, the sampling theorem as an orthonormal expansion, the isometry between passband signals and their baseband representation, and the spectral-efficiency optimality of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). Subsequent chapters address noise, hypothesis testing, Gaussian stochastic processes, and the sufficiency of the matched filter outputs. Uniquely, there is a treatment of white noise without generalized functions, and of the power spectral density without artificial random jitters and random phases in the analysis of QAM. This systematic and insightful book, with over 300 exercises, is ideal for graduate courses in digital communication, and for anyone asking 'why' and not just 'how'.