One important point to add to Umbra's great advice: If you live in an urban or suburban area served by a storm sewer system (i.e. the grates in the streets), be sure to keep your leaves, the resulting mulch, and any other organic debris away from the streets and sidewalks. While great for the garden and yards, organic matter is bad news if it hits the storm sewers, which generally feed right into local streams, lakes, and rivers. This can contribute to algal blooms and hypoxia, killing acquatic life all the way downstream -- In my case, even into the Gulf of Mexico.

So compost those leaves, but make sure your monster leaf pile is under control to keep those leaves from escaping into the wild.